


that would be enough

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-05 17:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 56
Words: 38,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5383793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><i>let me be a part of the narrative in the story they will write someday<br/>let this moment be the first chapter: where you decide to stay...and we could be enough.</i> </p>
  <p>[a collection of Barton Family Farm shorts]</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago, in an attempt to dive headfirst into a fandom/pairing that was making me insane with feelings, I opened up my ask box on tumblr to prompts and such. Since I wrote (and continue to write) a large amount of small, independent stories around these three [meaning, they really weren't written within the scope of my current OT3 series], I decided to finally get around to sticking them all in one place via a collection of sorts. 
> 
> Consider this a WIP, new chapters will be added every so often. In the meantime, [find me on tumblr for feelings and prompts](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com), if you are so inclined.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **"Clint feels he should be insulted that his wife and his partner literally cannot keep their hands off each other, but honestly, he just finds it hot as fuck."**

Sometimes, Clint thinks there’s just no end.

Laura teases him that he loves his children too much, and Clint would be inclined to agree, despite the fact his job keeps him away more than he’s comfortable with. And most days, Clint thinks maybe he would consider dropping it all, if it meant he got to be around them all the time.

 _Most_  days.

“You look like someone dropped a house on you,” Natasha remarks when he walks into the kitchen without saying a word. “What happened out there?”

“One broken up squabble, one skinned knee, and a lot of dad voice,” Clint says tiredly, sinking into the chair. The legs squeak underneath him, as if it’s a scolding reminder that despite the fact he’s done nothing but work nonstop around the house, there’s still  _so much to do_.

Natasha’s lips quirk. “Ready to give up your day job and be full time dad?”

“Nope,” Clint says quickly, reaching for Natasha’s coffee. She frowns and swats his hand away.

“It’s your house, get your own coffee.”

“Yours is already made,” Clint protests as if that makes it okay and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“I cannot believe you just used your seven-year-old’s argument on me.” She takes a pointed gulp of caffeine. “I’m taking a shower, if you want to join me.”

Clint grumbles under his breath as she gets up, trailing a hand across his shoulder, her fingers dancing along the sore skin of his arm. He tries to remember if that particular bruise was from Lila’s piggybacks or the fall he took while on the run last week, and realizes he can’t remember.

As soon as he’s sure Natasha’s gone, he sneaks quick swigs from her cup (half expecting  _I can see you, Barton_ , because the house may be huge but Natasha somehow managed to make her presence more prominent here than in his Brooklyn apartment, or their small quarters at SHIELD) and then gets up slowly, making his way upstairs. The door to the bathroom is slightly ajar, steam spilling out in curled tendrils, and Clint feels frustrated that she’s letting out the heat, especially because she knows better than that.

“Come on, Nat, we talked about this. Door’s gotta be closed anyway, the kids –”

He stops short as he enters the bathroom, finding the shower curtain halfway open, drops of water spilling over the side, but it’s not the slippery floor that makes him double-take. It’s Natasha pressed against the tile wall of the bathroom, his wife pinning her there, Natasha’s hands clearly invested in exploring every available inch of Laura’s body.

“You’ve gotta be  _kidding_  me.”

Natasha’s neck snaps up at the words and Laura turns her head lazily, meeting Clint’s eyes.

“You were late.”

“It’s been two minutes!”

“You were two minutes too late,” Laura adds, going back to sucking water off Natasha’s neck and Clint crosses his arms in annoyance.

“I asked you this morning if you wanted sex, and you said no.”

“Because I didn’t,” Laura says simply as Natasha’s fingers work their way into her scalp. “I was tired. I’m not tired now.” She holds her arm out. “Not too late to join, though.”

Clint tries to glare, to make his emotional reaction anything but parallel to what he’s feeling in other parts of his body, because he can feel himself sweating profusely and he knows instinctively that it’s not because of the heat from the shower.

“You’ll feel a lot better if you take your pants off,” Natasha says conversationally as she steps around Laura, tugging at the curtain, and Clint curses quietly.

“I sleep with both of you on a regular basis, you think I can help it? Also, I’m your husband and I’m never home, so I’m calling trump card.”

“Natasha’s never home either,” Laura points out, kissing her again, and Clint feels his insides twist and thrash. It’s far from the worst thing in the world, the fact that his wife and partner can’t seem to keep their hands off each other, but there are certain parts of his body that can’t seem to reconcile the fact that they’ve gone from mutual attraction, to behavior akin to rebellious teenagers, in less than a few months.

“Look, you can stand there being turned on all day, or you can join us,” Laura says, finally breaking away from Natasha and turning around. “But the hot water’s probably going to run out in about ten minutes, and Cooper’s probably on his way inside to bother you about the wheels on his new bike, so if you want in, I’d suggest acting now.” 

Clint huffs out a laugh, stepping out of his clothes and into the shower, and pulling the curtain closed behind him.

“Yes, ma’am.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Apodyopis - The act of mentally undressing someone.**

In Laura’s opinion, she’s not spying. Not really. Not  _technically_.

Not spying. Just.. _observing_.

Her favorite spot on the farm isn’t the kitchen, where she takes out most of her stress in the form of cooking, or the front porch, where she does most of her reading. It’s the window in her bedroom that overlooks the sprawling front yard of the house, the window blocked by a thick desk scattered with papers and books photographs of Cooper posing in a baseball uniform and Lila cheekily mugging for the camera in her Christmas dress.

It’s a haven, of sorts – a secluded place, somewhere that she can sit or stand and watch her children play with their father, or watch Clint work around the yard and around the house. And sometimes, it’s a curse as much as it’s a comfort – day slipping into night slipping into day again after a harrowing phone call with poor reception and the sound of gunfire, as she sits at the window and watches, hoping and waiting to see the familiar gait of Clint walking towards the house or to see the muted lights of the quinjet flashing across the grass.

Today, though, the scene outside the window is neither a curse, or a comfort. It’s a thrill. It’s Clint and Natasha returning from what Laura knows has been a rough sparring session, arms slung around each other’s waist playfully, hair tousled and clothes dirtied and bodies clearly aching what Laura assumes are too many cuts and bruises.

Laura leans closer to the window, watching Natasha as she bends over to stretch, the way the other woman’s body curves delicately, like an agile cat. Laura feels her mouth go dry as she catches sight of the way Natasha’s tank top slips down her shoulder, exposing a thick stretch of skin. Natasha tugs the strap back up but Laura’s mind is three steps behind, or maybe ahead, her brain mapping the curves of Natasha’s body with ferocious clarity as Laura pushes the top down all way, the shirt falling off easily, exposing the satin bra she had watched Natasha put on that morning, which also comes off until the entire top of her is naked and bare.

Natasha arches upwards, letting her hands stretch towards the sky, her entire body dipping in what Laura thinks could almost be the start of a backbend and then she curls forward again, letting herself still. Laura mentally removes Natasha’s pants, the socks and shoes and then the underwear, feeling the her face flush when she imagines what Natasha must look like down  _there_ , finds herself wondering idly if Natasha keeps herself groomed in places other than her hair or her nails or her legs, because Clint’s never actually told her those particular details and Laura’s never bothered to ask.

Natasha liked to be coy about her body, she liked to be deceptive about her scars and bashful about the way she was built ( _”I’m different than Clint, I wasn’t made to be loved,” she says one day, as if it’s common knowledge_ ) but in Laura’s mind, she’s utterly beautiful.

Clint leans over and whispers something into Natasha’s ear and she laughs, and Laura can’t quite hear the sound through the closed window but she sees the way Natasha’s mouth lifts and opens and knows the lilt of the raspy tone very obviously emitting from the other woman’s throat. There’s sweat dripping down Laura’s back that has nothing to do with the broken air conditioner, she can feel waves of anticipation curling in her stomach and her fingers are gripping the back of the chair so hard that her knuckles are turning white. Clint kisses Natasha quickly on the cheek before walking away, leaving her in his wake as he approaches the house, and Laura jumps slightly as the door slams downstairs.

“Honey? I’m home.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Capernoited - Slightly intoxicated or tipsy**

“Okay,” Laura says after she’s poured enough wine to fill each glass four times over, “tell me about Budapest.”

“I’d prefer we tell you about Turkey, first,” Natasha says, taking a generous sip of wine.

“Or London,” Clint adds, picking up his glass. “ _Why_  are we starting with Budapest?”

“Because,” and Laura tries to level her voice so that it doesn’t sound overly accusatory, “it’s the only thing I’ve been able to find in these files that Fury sent over and there’s no other information except a number that I’m assuming is a reference to a hotel room.”

“A hotel room,” Natasha says, sipping her wine. “That’s a new one.”

“Most people assume it’s the number of partners I’ve had,” Clint adds, and Laura kicks him hard under the table, making him wince.

“ _Ow_. Can’t we start with Paris?”

“You can start with anything you want if you just tell me what everything means,” Laura says, downing her wine and reaching for the second open bottle. Clint grins, swirling the liquid in his glass.

“So my wife wants to know about the operation where I screwed my partner.”

“That part may or may not be true,” Natasha pipes in, drinking more. “Two truths and a lie: we had sex, we’ve been to Budapest, we got stitches.”

“That’s not fair,” Laura says with an exaggerated frown. “ _All_  of those could be true.” Natasha grins.

“I know.”

When her hair isn’t done up, when she has on no make-up, and when she’s not carrying her weapons, Laura always forgets what it’s like to play games with Natasha. It’s different than her husband, who will act coy about things but isn’t quite smart enough to play cat-and-mouse when it comes to dropping pertinent information. 

Some day, she thinks, she’ll find out about Budapest. Some day, she’ll find out about the stares and the looks and the small personal inside jokes that come out of referencing that particular mission, the one that had happened before Clint had formally introduced Natasha to a life that involved a farm and homemade bread and babies.

_Some day._

“You’re both making my life miserable.”

“And you,” Clint slurs dramatically, “are drunk.”

“No,” Laura responds sloppily, leaning over. “ _I_  am tipsy.”

“Oh my god, you are both the sappiest people ever,” Natasha says, her eyes bright. “But I think I love you, anyway.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you**

_Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you._

The first time it happens, they’re sitting at the table eating breakfast.

Natasha’s just come from the shower, and she’s currently ignoring the fact that Laura can’t seem to take her eyes off her, attributing the other woman’s fixation to the fact that Laura had narrowly missed her exiting the bathroom in nothing but a half-open robe. She takes a bite of waffle and spoons more sugar into her coffee, refusing to lift her eyes because she knows Laura hasn’t moved her gaze, but damned if she wasn’t starting to feel a little self-conscious, especially this early in the morning.

They’re all quiet – Clint is reading the sports section of the paper and Laura is leaning her head against the inside of her palm as she stirs her tea, and she can hear the short exhales of Laura’s breathing as she lets her gaze linger. There’s something different about the way Laura is looking at her, she can tell, it’s the same way she’s felt when Clint’s looked at her when she’s in one of her fancy outfits and they’re undercover, unable to talk properly or share anything more than a glance or a hand squeeze. It’s the same way she’s felt when she knows he’s imagining her in nothing but bare skin, trying to curb his erection, waiting to jump her as soon as he gets back to the safety of the hotel.

She looks up, meeting Laura’s eyes, and smiles when she sees the fire trying to break through.

-

The first time it happens, they’re sitting in the living room trying to take a nap.

Clint’s  _trying_  to take a nap, at least. He’s gotten barely any sleep lately thanks to time zone jetlags piling up on one another and that, combined with overextending himself on house work and Lila’s constant need for attention at all times of the day, has left him almost too exhausted to actually pass out. He’s sprawled out on the couch, legs up on the armrest, while Laura and Natasha share the large overstuffed chair that Clint routinely uses when he’s rocking Lila or reading to Cooper.

He zeroes in on Laura first, narrowing his eyes to focus on the way her hair trails down her shoulder, her oversized I’VE KISSED AN ARCHER tee-shirt bunched at the middle where Natasha is curled into her side. Immediately, Laura’s eyes find his and she lifts her lips slightly, causing a tremor to run down Clint’s spine. He knows that look. He’s _given_  that look. It’s the look that he’s seen when he’s presented himself to her in a particularly form-fitting set of clothes, and his skin is suddenly crawling with anticipation at the realization that Laura’s probably imagining him sprawled out in this very position in absolutely nothing.

Averting his eyes to Natasha is no help, his face only becomes more heated as she trails her gaze over his chest and then his legs, and he shifts quickly as her mouth parts, her lips coming apart to expose a sliver of tongue that runs over her teeth.

And goddamn, Clint’s hard, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

-

The first time it happens, they’re coming back from a long walk in the middle of summer.

Laura’s taken advantage of having both Clint and Natasha home, and also of the fact that both kids have been occupied with camp activities all day, and picked out a path by the farm that veers just sightly into the woods, a cooling canopy of trees to shield their bodies from the hot midwestern sun.

She pulls ahead while they stop for water and too late realizes her shoelace is untied, bending over to pull at the strings. Immediately, she’s aware of the silence around her, the crickets quietly singing against the rush of trees, the steady drip of water from a nearby creek, any and every natural sound of nature but no sound from the two people who have been walking with her.

Something warm shoots through Laura’s stomach as she straightens up, noticing how both Clint and Natasha have stopped in their tracks and aren’t bothering to hide their stares. Laura huffs out a soft, self-conscious laugh as she turns away, continuing on her path, the silence following her even though she hears the telltale sound of footsteps crunching through dried twigs that indicate they’re both following.

-

The first time it happens, they’re lying in bed together, Clint reading a book and Natasha humming the remnants of a soft Russian lullaby and Laura making notes for work in a small book.

This time, when they look at each other, everything is real.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Mamihlapinatapei - The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move.**

In Lisbon, he saves her from a fall.

She’s running too fast from the thugs who have come after her and unlike Clint, who has managed to find an alley to duck into, she’s too focused on getting away to rationalize an escape route. She speeds past him, past the people on the street, dodging cars whose tires squeal and whir, and he takes off without a second thought, shooting blindly behind him with the only arrows he has left, the only knowledge of whether or not he’s hit his mark realized by the sounds of pain that reach his ears.

She’s still running too fast for him to fully grasp her but he manages to catch her by the jacket when she lets her foot fall into a puddle, the slippery black water against the pavement causing her to lurch and tumble, steadied only by Clint’s strong hold.

He looks at her then – caught, still, finally  _still_  – and tells her he loves her.  _I almost lost you_ , he says with his eyes, and he wonders if one day he’ll be able to say the words out loud.

-

In Madrid, she saves him from a trap.

He’s taken the intel that’s been given to him, to them, they’ve read it over and assessed the information backwards and forwards and inside and out to ensure that there were no loopholes, and she sends Clint into the field with a comm unit and a quick hug, her eyes saying what her lips can’t:  _don’t die out there. I can’t lose you._

She tracks his every move through the equipment she’s been set up with from her spot in the safe house, radios him when she finds something suspicious, relaxes when half of their night evolves into him cracking wise and making stupid jokes, finding nothing compromising. And then she sees the figure on the screen, a small white dot just out of what she knows must be his peripheral vision. 

“Get out of there,” she barks into the comm, not knowing why but also not bothering to wonder about the fear churning through her stomach; she’s learned long ago to trust her instincts, especially when it came to their line of work. He hesitates, she sees him do so, but he turns and runs out of the space and no sooner has he vanished from her radar than does the building blow, a loud, vibrating boom that shakes the ground, and shakes Natasha to her core.

She bites down on her nails, chews the skin around her cuticles raw until the door opens slowly and she jumps up to find him walking inside. He’s covered in blood and dirt, though none of it seems to actually be his, despite the fact he’s visibly limping with a cut on his forehead.

“See? Totally fine.”

She looks at him then –  caught, still, finally  _still_  – and tells him she loves him.  _I almost lost you_ , she says with her eyes, and she wonders if one day she’ll be able to say the words out loud.

-

In Budapest, she’s there when no one else can be.

She sits beside him in a small make-shift hospital while nurses and personnel tiptoe around his bed, as if they’re afraid to intrude on a private conversation. She’d been the first one they’d called when the news came through, she’d been the first one to force SHIELD to book her a flight and the first one to ask to see his medical records. She’d kept the rest of the world locked away, keeping out anyone who wasn’t an employee designated to help.

He wakes too slowly for her liking but he’s  _awake_ , and that’s what matters, and she watches his face as he comes to the growing realization that he can’t hear the words that are coming out of his mouth. Natasha leans over and puts both hands on his cheeks and finds his eyes, soothing the pain away with her gaze.

_I love you._

Clint’s breathing, which has been panicked and erratic, starts to even out as he stares back at her.  _I know._

Another look.  _We’ve never needed to hear each other’s words anyway, right?_

Another look, a small smile. _No. We haven’t._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompts: **Tarantism - The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing.**

Laura finds her curled up on the porch chair with Cooper’s blue and white baby blanket draped over her knees, and pauses in the doorway.

“Nat?”

“Mmm.” Natasha turns, offering a smile, but Laura notices that it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She steps closer and sits down next to Natasha, rubbing the other woman’s leg.

“You know that a quinjet isn’t going to fly over here and make a grand appearance like one of those movies, right?”

Natasha snorts, shaking her head. “Believe me, I know. My life isn’t that kind of movie,” she adds quietly, dropping her head to Laura’s shoulder. “But maybe sometimes I want it to be.”

“Maybe,” Laura agrees, inclining her head and resting her cheek against Natasha’s hair. “It’s okay, you know. To say that you’re sad.”

“I’m not sad,” Natasha says bluntly, but Laura instantly knows it’s a lie. “I’m just…disappointed, I guess.” She pauses. “Clint wouldn’t have even noticed anything going on, if you hadn’t said something to him while you were here…maybe that’s the point. Maybe he was blind, too.”

“I doubt that,” Laura says, reaching for her hand. “Clint can be a bit of a space case when it comes to picking up on emotions that aren’t you and me, but you deserve love, Natasha.” She strokes her face. “You deserve to show someone that you can love, and if they don’t see what you can give them, then they’re not worth your time.”

Natasha nods. “Yeah,” she says carefully, raising her head, and Laura kisses her on the cheek. 

“Dinner’s ready in ten,” she says as she rocks up on the balls of her feet, meeting Clint inside, who hands over Nathaniel.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

“Sad,” Laura replies, taking the baby and sitting down at the table. She closes her eyes as Clint leans over to kiss her, lifting her shirt and allowing Nathaniel to latch onto her breast. “You know that.”

Clint looks a little wistful. “I told her that she didn’t need him. That she had us. She loves us…why the hell does she even care that Banner left?”

Laura sighs. “You know perfectly well why, and it has nothing to do with us,” she says pointedly as Nathaniel sucks harder. Clint runs a hand through his hair.

“I just want her to be okay.”

“I am okay,” Natasha interrupts as she walks inside, arms crossed in a silent challenge. “Let’s just eat, okay?”

Laura throws a look to Clint, who shrugs and starts bringing plates of food to the table while Laura continues to nurse Nathaniel, and Natasha takes a seat by her side.

-

There’s a routine clean-up after dinner, with Natasha taking care of Nathaniel while Clint and Laura wash dishes and placate Cooper and Lila with promises of bedtime stories and tomorrow’s adventures of taking a bike ride, so long as it doesn’t rain. At some point, Laura realizes she’s lost track of both her husband and his partner, and when Nathaniel finally stops fussing enough for Laura to move around without having to constantly focus on keeping him quiet, she makes her way into the living room.

The house is silent, and she’s not sure what she’s expected to see – maybe both of them reading on the couch, or the silhouettes of their bodies on the porch, the place where they spend most of their outside time when they visit. She wanders upstairs slowly, opening the door to the master bedroom, light spilling out from inside and blanketing the darkened hallway.

She can’t figure out if the sight surprises or amuses her: Natasha and Clint swaying together in the middle of the floor, but not in a way that looks overly intimate. They’re holding each other tightly, hands gripping each other’s waist, but Clint is spinning her every so often, dipping her body and making her laugh softly. Laura can’t exactly make out what they’re saying when they exchange words, but she thinks she hears something along the lines of, “ _you were better at this when you were bleeding out in Prague_.”

Laura clears her throat quietly, unsure of how else to announce herself because while it _is_  her house, she feels strange intruding on what clearly seems like it’s supposed to be a private moment. Clint and Natasha turn in surprise, clearly caught off guard.

“I, uh…” Clint looks a little sheepish. “Looks a little funny, I guess.”

Laura shrugs. “I haven’t seen you dance since our wedding, unless you count Lila’s princess parties.”

Clint chuckles. “It’s…sometimes we dance,” he explains simply. “Alone. When we’re sad. Or when we’re not feeling like ourselves. It’s probably silly, but it takes the edge off, and it’s better that we don’t have to talk.” He offers out his hand. “Wanna join?”

Laura looks at Clint and then over at Natasha, who has dropped her arms from around his waist and is looking at her with a small smile. 

“I’m going to watch,” Laura decides. “I like watching.” It’s not a lie, because she does, and one of her favorite things to do sometimes is just  _observe_ , to watch the two people she loves interact with each other, intimate or not, in a way that she knows most of the outside world doesn’t get the pleasure of seeing.

“Laura Barton,” and then Natasha’s standing in front of her, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t care that you just gave birth to a burrito baby. If you don’t get up, I’ll never visit this farm again.”

Laura laughs openly as Natasha leans down to kiss her and then places Nathaniel in his baby carrier, watching him bounce happily as she joins them in the middle of the floor. Clint’s arm circles her waist in a protective hold and Natasha wraps her arms around Laura’s shoulder, leaning into the other woman, swaying against her with all the contentedness of someone who feels like they’ve found home.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Mamihlapinatapei - The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move.**

She catches it after dinner, when she’s mashing up a combination of baby foods for Lila.

She’s used to Natasha staring – it’s what she often does when she’s bored, or when she’s not exactly sure what to do with herself when there’s no child to take care of, or when there’s nothing for her to busy herself with in between meals and activities and bedtimes. And maybe it’s because they’ve now all been sleeping together in the same bed for over a month, but there’s definitely something about the way she catches Natasha looking at her that seems  _different_.

(The first time Clint had given her a look like that, once she realizes why it looks so familiar, was when she had shown up at his apartment at midnight in sweatpants, holding a bag of Chinese food and his favorite movie.)

“Is Nat okay?” Laura asks as they get ready for bed, Natasha having relocated herself to the bathroom to change and brush her teeth. She’s also never really sure if things with Natasha are worth prodding, whether she’s upset for a certain reason or whether something’s happened that’s affected her to the point of becoming compromised. Clint looks confused.

“Yeah, why?”

Laura shrugs. “Just curious.” She goes back to getting ready for bed and when she turns around, Clint’s smiling, a grin spreading over his face. Laura places her hands on her hips.

“ _What_?”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed it.”

“Noticed what?”

“Really?” Clint raises an eyebrow. “And usually  _I’m_  the one who’s daft around here when it comes to subtlety…”

“You always are,” Laura retorts, picking up an old doll from the desk and moving it to the chair. “What are you talking about?”

Clint hesitates, almost as if he’s wondering whether or not he should say the words out loud. “I’ve seen the way Natasha looks at you.”

Laura’s stomach drops to her feet. “So what?” she challenges against Clint’s growing smile.

“So, it’s basically the same look she gave me when we first met. Pretty sure it’s the same look I gave  _you_. She loves you.”

“As a friend,” Laura says quickly, and Clint shakes his head.

“Nah. More than that. I think she’s just afraid to say it.”

“Afraid?” Laura takes her hair in both hands and gathering it in a low ponytail. “The person who regularly jumps out of a plane on a motorcycle and takes on men half her size while in three inch heels with no back-up is  _afraid_?”

“I guess, yeah,” Clint says noncommittally, taking his shirt off. “Maybe she’s not sure you’ll feel the same way.”

“That makes no sense,” Laura decides. “We’ve all been close with each other for over a month. We’ve all slept together. How is she still not sure I feel the same way?”

“Hey, you know Nat.” He walks over to the other side of the bed and kisses her. “Things with her can be…complicated. Besides, she might just be worried that she’ll come between us if she says anything.”

“Even though we already know,” Laura assesses flatly, and Clint nods.

“Uh huh. Like I said. Complicated.”

Laura sighs, getting into bed. “Apparently.” She pauses, watching as Clint grabs the covers and pulls them back so he can climb into the middle. “Should I say something?”

“Hmmm?” Clint squints at her, turning over. “What would you say?”

“I don’t know,” Laura admits. “That it’s okay, if she…if she loves me?” It still feels strange for her to say the words out loud, not because Natasha is another woman, but because Laura’s still trying to figure out how she can love two people who are so close to her in different ways. Clint makes a noise, turning over in bed.

“You’re too pragmatic. Just let her find her space and tell you in time. That’s what she did with me.”

“That is  _not_  how she told the story,” Laura reminds him. “According to her, you were drugged and you said it first.”

“Minor details,” he mutters as Laura kicks him lightly, shutting him up just before Natasha walks back into the room.

“What’d I miss?” she asks as she climbs into bed next to Clint, fluffing a pillow. Laura hums under her breath.

“Nothing important. Just Clint trying to remind me how differently your stories about certain things are.”

“Oh.” Natasha props herself on one elbow, hair falling over her shoulders. “I could fill a book with those tales.”

“Fucking hell,” Clint mutters into the pillow, his voice barely audible. “Can I sleep here _one_  night without getting ganged up on?”

Laura meets Natasha’s eyes and the other woman gives her a look that makes her mouth go dry.

“Goodnight Clint,” Natasha says lightly, and both of them lean over in unison to kiss him on the cheek.

-

Laura wakes up to soft cries on the baby monitor at what she thinks might be three in the morning, and manages to stumble out of bed without waking either of her companions.

“You don’t sleep for very long, do you baby girl?” she murmurs, gathering Lila from her crib and cradling her gently. When she turns around Natasha is standing in the doorway.

“Sorry,” Natasha apologizes, and Laura knows she looks as surprised as she feels. “I couldn’t sleep and heard you get up, and…” She trails off and Laura feels her face relax.

“I’m surprised you get any sleep at all with this one,” Laura says, motioning for Natasha to come further into the room. She does, closing the door.

“I’m getting used to it.” Natasha perches on the edge of the chair in the corner, and gazes up at Laura through a curtain of tousled red. “She’s loud, but she’s cute. Like her parents. She’ll make a fan out of me, yet.”

Laura smiles, watching Natasha’s eyes soften in a rare moment of utter vulnerability. She takes a breath, wondering if she should say the words, if she should push, despite what Clint’s told her. 

(Laura had never been good at following directions, but it had gotten her Clint, and it had gotten her Natasha, and Cooper and Lila, and so she’s okay with admitting that.)

“Nat –”

“Ugh, does she ever sleep?”

Laura whirls around steadily, narrowing her eyes at the new figure standing in the doorway, the broad shouldered frame slumped against wall with hair sticking straight up in all directions. “Clint.”

“Heard talking,” he says with a wide yawn, pushing open the door. “Woke up. Has Nat told you that she loves you yet?”

“ _Clint_ ,” Laura says sharply, glancing over at Natasha who looks startled, and then a little guilty. She counts to five in her head and lets out a breath, swaying with Lila in her arms.

“She didn’t need to,” Laura says when she finally speaks, and she feels her world brighten when she meets Natasha’s eyes. “I already know.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Concilliabule - A secret meeting of people who are hatching a plot.**

Clint finds Laura where he’s left her – drawing pictures in the grass with Lila, while Cooper plays with his nerf bow a few feet away, shooting purple arrows into the sky.

“Steal you for a moment?” Clint asks, stopping in front of her and bending down to tickle his daughter. Lila lets out a yell as she falls over onto the grass and Laura laughs quietly.

“Will you promise not to compromise our daughter if I let you?”

“You know I can’t do that,” Clint says, leaning down to kiss Lila on the head as Laura gets up slowly, moving a few yards away where they can both stand uninterrupted, but still see the kids easily. 

“What’s up?” Laura asks, pulling her hair back from where it’s come loose from of her low ponytail. 

“Baby names,” Clint says, his eyes glancing towards Laura’s stomach. She raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not due for months. Why are we talking about this  _now_?”

“Because,” Clint says impatiently. “I’m only home for a few more days, and if we don’t have this conversation while I’m here, it’ll never happen.” He stops to take a breath. “And I’m not going to do this over the phone while I’m in the middle of some firefight.”

Laura eyes him carefully. “Okay,” she relents. “Fine. But why is it so important for us to talk about names in general? We have a list about a mile long already.”

“Yeah, I know.” Clint scuffs his foot against the ground. It’s not something he hadn’t been aware of, they’d been keeping a box full of scrap paper with various scribbled names since before Cooper was born. “The thing is…I’m thinking of a name we haven’t talked about yet.”

Laura looks confused, glancing past him to check on her kids. “What is it?”

“Natasha.” He takes a breath, watching Laura’s face change, the weight of the words sinking in.

“Natasha?”

Clint nods slowly and Laura tilts her head, smiling.

“Natasha,” Laura repeats quietly. “Clint –”

“Look, there’s a chance she’ll hate it,” Clint interrupts. “I mean, if anyone knows that, it’s me. I know this maternal thing isn’t for her, even though Lila…” He trails off, because neither of them had been able to understand the way their daughter had latched onto Natasha almost as if there was a bond between them that had been forged through blood – and then even after that, it had taken Natasha awhile to come to terms with the fact that someone who wasn’t Clint and Laura  _wanted_  to be close to her.

“She could hate it,” Laura agrees. “The last thing I want to do is push her away.” She looks at Clint sadly as he meets her eyes; they had finally reached what Clint considered was a comfortable relationship between all of them, though that long road had been filled with more speed bumps than Clint thinks he’d ever experienced.

“But it is perfect,” he adds. “She’s a part of us…of our family…” He swallows down a sudden bout of emotion at the words. “It’ll be her choice, but let me ask. Okay?”

“No,” Laura says resolutely, taking his hand and squeezing it gently. “We’ll  _both_  ask. When you’re here. Not when you’re in some foreign country whose name I can’t pronounce, not while you’re driving through a war zone and trying to find cell reception, not when you’re on the other end of your bow…the next time you’re here. With us. The next time you’re both home.”

Clint wordlessly opens his arms and Laura falls into them. He wraps himself around her body, kissing her forehead before turning his attention back to Lila’s dancing and Cooper’s arrows, feeing Laura’s hands clutch him more securely.

“Yes, ma’am.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **"Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!"**

The first attack comes from Lila.

 _And really_ , Natasha thinks as the hard ball of snow hits her back, catching her off guard, she should have expected it - after all, she was the one who had taught the girl the best angle to swing from, the one who had helped her recognize what movements would allow her to deliver the most force.

Natasha turns to find the six-year-old grinning at her from underneath a large hat, rabbit ear flaps covering the side of her small face. 

“Daddy says the best time to catch you is when you’re not paying attention!”

“Daddy is right,” Natasha says with a small sigh, and she bites down on her tongue, because Lila does  _not_  need to know that when Clint said that, he wasn’t referring to a snowball fight. She shares Lila’s grin and goes back to helping Laura shovel out the walkway, flinging mounds of fresh white snow to the side.

“I should get paid for this,” Natasha says only half jokingly. “I’m convinced at this point, he’s only  _pretending_  he sprained his ankle.”

Laura glances up at the house, where Clint’s sitting on the porch wrapped in a large overcoat, his leg elevated on one of the chairs. He waves from a distance, then goes back to his book, and Laura rolls her eyes.

“Clint ‘injury prone’ Barton?” She shrugs. “Don’t think I’m not punishing him for making us do all the work. It’s not like he’s getting any for the next two weeks with his foot still swollen like that.” She throws snow over her shoulder, and when she turns, she finds that the other woman has abandoned her shovel and is bending over the pile she’s created, packing snow with two gloved hands. 

“Natasha Romanoff. Don’t you dare –”

Laura’s voice is cut off by the ball of snow that hits her in the face, frozen water dripping down her cheeks. It’s a gentle toss - Natasha knows better than that - but it still makes Laura yell in surprise, and Natasha looks up to where Clint has curiously turned his head towards them again.

“Natasha!”

She shrugs and walks over to Laura, wiping the remnants of snow away from her hair and cheeks, and brushes her thumb over Laura’s lips.

“I just thought maybe he deserved to know what he was missing,” Natasha says in a low voice as she leans in for a kiss, the warmth of Laura’s breath a blanket on a body that feels like it’s been cold for too long.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Cagamosis [An unhappy marriage]**

It’s not  _bad_ , is how Clint explains it to Natasha.

It’s just not good, either.

“Okay, so define bad,” Natasha says when Clint finally gives in, bending over the kitchen counter in his apartment, and he sighs.

“I dunno. We haven’t been happy for months.”

“Says you.”

“Says  _her_ ,” Clint says sharply, before considering. “And okay, maybe me, too, but only because this job has been making things harder.”

Natasha continues to dip her tea bag methodically, staying quiet until she speaks again. “Do you know why?”

“How the hell should I know?” Clint asks. “Probably because I leave so much. Maybe I don’t do my laundry the right away. Maybe I’m bad in bed.”

“I can vouch for the lie of the last one,” Natasha says casually, shooting him a grin. Clint glares at her.

“For the record, she has no idea about  _that_ , either.”

“That I’m sleeping with you, or that I find her attractive?”

Clint hesitates. “Both.” He gestures towards her tea. “Make me one?”

Natasha rolls her eyes but grabs another mug from the counter, this one showing a blue and white pattern with simply the words COFFEE branded on the side. Clint relaxes as she hands him her own mug.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “Just…you make tea in a way that causes it to actually taste _good_.”

“That’s rich, coming from the coffee connoisseur, “ Natasha says with a small smile. She reaches over and takes his hand. “You’ve been to see someone?”

“A therapist? Yeah, two different ones,” Clint admits, casting his eyes downward. “Hasn’t really made a difference. I don’t know, Nat…it’s not that we don’t love each other. It’s just…neither one of us feels  _happy_. And it was never like this before.”

Natasha lets herself fall into silence as Clint drinks his tea, and then tugs on his hand.

“When’s the next time you go home?”

Clint looks up in surprise. “Dunno. Maybe three weeks.” He eyes her curiously. “Why?”

Natasha shrugs. “Just checking,” she says, a smile playing over her lips that suggests her words mean anything but the innocent tone they convey. “I’m thinking it might be time for me to pay the farm a visit again.”

-

Clint doesn’t bring Natasha to the farm as often as he wants; part of that is due to the nature of their job and the other part of that is because it took Natasha ages to feel like she was actually welcome there. Still, Cooper practically tackles her as she walks through the door behind him, and even Laura’s smile seems to shift from forced happiness to genuine emotion.

“Brought a friend,” Clint says, kissing her. Laura kisses him back, though it’s perfunctory more than anything else.

“Make yourself at home,” Laura says, eyeing Natasha. “That is, if he lets you.” Cooper’s still hanging onto Natasha’s leg, and Natasha smiles at him, shifting gently until he lets go.

“I’ll help you with those, if you want,” Natasha offers, glancing past Laura to the mess in the kitchen, the papers spread over the table and the dirty dishes piling in the sink. She throws Clint a knowing look as she leads Laura away, and Clint tries to shove off his frustration by focusing on Cooper, who is hellbent on telling Clint everything he missed while he was away.

To his benefit, Laura is distracted by Natasha enough to not cause tension during dinner and then afterwards, and Clint sequesters himself away with his son while Natasha and Laura take a walk. He’d normally feel worse about not spending time with his wife, despite their issues, but knowing Natasha’s here with them is actually helpful. Still, the last thing he expects to see when he walks into his bedroom later at night is Natasha and Laura locked in a delicate embrace, lips pressed together.

“Erm.” He stands still, trying to decide if he should break the moment altogether or just say fuck it, and pretend he was never there at all. He clears his throat quietly and then a little more loudly until the two women break away from each other and turn around. Clint notices that both Laura and Natasha’s face are slight shades of red.

“Don’t worry, Clint,” Natasha says after a long silence, breaking the tension. “It’s helping.”

“Helping…” Clint trails off, looking from Laura to Natasha and then back to Laura. “You…she knows?”

“Yes,” Laura says curtly, and Clint double takes at the smile she gives him, it’s different than the one he’d gotten when he walked in the door – more hopeful, almost happy.

“Well.” Clint shakes his head and throws up his hands. “Guess no one needs to hide their sexual preferences anymore.”

-

Two months later, they’re back at the farm for another routine visit, the three of them stretched out on the couch as the afternoon dips into evening. Clint broaches the question when he feels he can’t hold off any longer.

“How did you know?”

Natasha looks up from where she’s been resting her head on his shoulder, looking confused. “Know what?”

“That this is what we needed. What she needed.” He watches as Natasha’s smile grows bigger.

“I didn’t know,” she says slyly. “I just did what I always do – I took a chance. It worked, right?”

Clint laughs quietly, glancing down to where Laura’s pressed into his side, her hand on his leg. “Yeah,” he admits, as Natasha snuggles back into his side. “I think it did.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **“You fainted…straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”**

Laura doesn’t consider herself someone who goes to extremes.

She’s had her wild past, like any young girl who longs to rebel against parents who are sometimes too strict, and work that is sometimes too stressful. She’s even had a few one-night stands, a few flings; one time she took a weekend trip to California just for the hell of it, because she wanted to be somewhere away from the Midwest.

But that was then. This was now, and now, Laura does not go to extremes. Laura doesn’t go to bars and flirt casually with nice-looking men and blow half of her paychecks on weekend trips to San Francisco when the weather’s nice. Laura drinks beer at home on her couch while watching reality television shows and re-runs of her favorite movies. Laura knits when she’s stressed, and Laura takes walks and sometimes borrows her girlfriend’s motorcycle when she needs to let off a little steam, riding a few miles around town.

So she’s really got no idea how she ended up here, sitting in her own apartment, watching over a strange man who is passed out on her couch.

He had caught her off guard - she had been in the middle of a re-read of  _Lord of the Rings_ , and was right about to settle in for the long battle of Pelennor Fields - when she was startled out of her thoughts by pounding at the front door, a sound that was so insistent, Laura felt she couldn’t ignore it. She opened it expecting to find a brash telemarketer, or possibly the annoying child that lived in the apartment across the hall and sometimes spent his days running around, pressing elevator buttons and banging on everyone else’s doors.

She hadn’t expected to find a beat-up looking man covered in dirt and blood, who mumbled a barely discernible  _sorry_  before he pitched forward, fainting into her arms.

He’s cute, at least - Laura will give him that - and she feels a stab of guilt for obviously checking him out when he’s unconscious. But hey, it’s not like Laura’s looking to get into bed with him once he opens his eyes, and that’s the excuse she gives herself as she continues to explore his body. His face has too many lines, though she thinks he’s probably not as old as he seems going by his looks, and his short blonde-brown hair is matted to his forehead, or the parts that aren’t sticking up in the back are. She’s washed off most of the blood covering his arms and face, relieved to find that a majority of it came from small surface wounds or that it wasn’t even his at all - something that makes Laura shudder before she pushes the thought away. The rest of him, though, was another story. Wherever he had come from had left his bare arms bruised and filthy, and one of his fingers is bent at an awkward angle that makes Laura nauseous when she looks at it, and his clothing ripped and torn across the chest and along the knee.

And then there was the fact that he had practically fainted in her arms, and Laura knows you don’t just  _faint_ like that unless you’re sick or dehydrated or have had a truly traumatic experience, and she would find the whole thing comical if she wasn’t downright worried.

She’s about to get up and debate calling 9-1-1 - because it’s already been an hour of him lying in her house with no change to his condition - when he stirs suddenly, groaning. His eyes flutter open and while she’s not sure what she expected to see, considering the condition he’s in, she’s surprised to find that they’re a gentle (and gorgeous) grey-blue.

“Who’re you?” he mumbles, struggling to focus, and Laura sighs.

“The girl whose apartment you apparently chose to collapse in.”

That seems to get his attention and he wakes up a little more, squinting as he meets her face, and then lets his gaze travel over what Laura knows is obviously an unfamiliar sight.

“Wait - seriously? Aw, shit. I - ugh.” He groans again, and this time it sounds like it hurts. “Nat’s gonna kill me.”

She’s got no idea what he’s talking about, and  _who the hell is Nat?_   _Wife, probably_ , Laura thinks instantly. Maybe a secret one that has no idea what this man obviously does in his downtime when he’s not crashing into other people’s apartments looking like he just killed someone.

“You know,” she says when she finds her voice (because goddammit he really is kind of attractive, and even more so now that he’s sort of awake) “if you wanted to get my attention, you didn’t have to pull the extreme romantic comedy move of falling into my arms.”

He laughs, and then coughs, and she hands him a bottle of water that she’s been keeping by her feet, some of which has been used already to clean him up. He takes it gratefully from her outstretched hand.

“So what do I call my knight in shining armor?” he asks once he’s drained half the bottle, and Laura smiles shyly.

“Laura. What do I call the walking human disaster that showed up in my apartment?”

The man returns the smile crookedly, and holds out a hand.

“I’m Clint.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Natasha and Laura conspire about something behind Clint's back.**

“So here’s the thing,” Natasha says when she sits down on the couch, effectively interrupting Laura in the middle of her book. “I’ve gotten used to being alone.”

Laura cracks a small smile and carefully dog-ears a page of the thick novel she’s been invested in, putting it down beside her. “You know the feeling is mutual, right?”

Natasha smiles back. “Sure you don’t miss that mess of a husband?”

“He may be a mess of a husband, but he’s  _your_  mess of a partner,” Laura points out wisely, and Natasha frowns slightly, inclining her head.

“I hate it when you make points.”

“You love it,” Laura says, leaning over to kiss her gently on the cheek. “Speaking of which, I’m assuming you got the same text I got earlier.”

Natasha nods, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “He’s coming home by tonight,” she says with a small sigh. “Really, I should be glad, but this just means the bed’s going to be that much smaller.”

“Which by default, means more cuddling,” Laura adds. “You know, he told me recently that he was trying to think of new ways to make things worth it when he was gone for so long. But we haven’t gotten enough time together to try anything out.”

“Yeah, phone sex just isn’t the same,” Natasha says with an overdramatic sigh, and Laura rolls her eyes.

“It’s not, and you know it.”

They both fall into silence, a sound that makes Natasha uncomfortable, even though she knows it’s only temporary until Clint comes home, until the door opens and footsteps clatter down the stairs and nap times are disturbed.

“We’ve never tried anything in the water,” Laura confesses slowly, and Natasha startles a little in confusion.

“You don’t have a pool,” Natasha says, and Laura shrugs.

“No, but we have a lake a few miles away. And it’s dark. And I know for a fact that they never bother to check for trespassers.” She shrugs. “Could be worth checking out.”

Natasha stares at Laura, her face splitting apart in a grin that continues to grow until it can’t anymore. “Laura Barton. You are wonderfully clever.” She kisses her, caressing her face with one hand. “And I love it.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Lygerastia - The condition of one who is only amorous when the lights are out.**

By the time Natasha arrives at the farm, she’s been up for over 48 hours.

It wasn’t supposed to be that type of op, the one she had taken on without really investigating it well enough – in and out, the simple detaining of a criminal who had been evading SHIELD’s records for years. But she had underestimated the fact that the job might require back-up, and although she had taken care of things as efficiently as ever, it didn’t mean her body wasn’t paying the price.

She stoops down as she reaches the front door, muscles protesting against the movement, unearthing the spare key from underneath a loose plank in the porch and then quietly enters, soundlessly locking the door behind her. The house is eerily quiet, one of the few times Natasha’s been here in recent memory when she hasn’t encountered the voices of children, Clint or Laura up with a child or simply up because their respective minds won’t let them sleep like normal people, even though they try to pretend that they are as much as possible.

Natasha hesitates at the bottom of the stairs, debating whether or not to join them in bed. It’s something that she knows will require waking both of them up, and right now, Natasha is too tired to deal with questions being asked about where she came from, why she’s here when she shouldn’t be and what she’s been doing while she was gone. But the thought of sleeping alone on the couch with a head that feels ready to explode feels achingly wrong, and so she slips off her shoes at the door and climbs the stairs carefully, making her way towards the master bedroom.

She stops in the doorway, surveying the sight before her, content to let it burn into her mind before she ruins the moment. It’s a good memory – Clint and Laura almost always are – one of the few she likes to catalogue, Natasha hates remembering things but one of the few moments she enjoys tucking away are the ones like this, where she can share a quiet, if not solitary moment, with the people that she loves.

Clint is stretched out on his back, legs sticking straight out and stretched wide under the short covers, one arm thrown over his head and mouth slightly open. Laura’s curled up next to him, her face pressed into the spot between his underarm and his side, a curve of a body pressed into his side with one of her own arms slung around his waist, fingers clutching at his skin, closing over the spot that Natasha knows houses his most recent surgical scar. The way they’re sleeping makes the king-sized bed look too small and too big all at once, two bodies tightly wrapped together, dwarfed by pillows and covers and bathed in the soft glow of approaching morning that peeks through the large open window, an awakening still too far off on the horizon.

Natasha finally moves, walking to the other side of the bed and not bothering to pull back the covers, it’s always too hot when they sleep together anyway and they never even use the heat in the winter because they’d rather take advantage of the warmth of each other’s bodies instead.

“Nat?” Laura asks quietly, her voice hoarse with sleep as Natasha settles into the pillow. Natasha smiles, she’s not surprised that Laura’s woken up so easily – she’s expected it. Clint, for all that he could be alert and snap awake at a moment’s notice when they’re on a job, slept like a brick when he knew he was out of any imminent danger.

“What are you doing here?” Laura continues in a whisper as she turns over carefully, kissing her cheek. Natasha shrugs, biting down on her lip to avoid voicing her pain.

“Wanted to come home.” She feels her eyes water at the response and wills herself not to cry, she  _won’t_  cry, she’s better than that, here – the farm was where she could let down her guard but she still hates being this vulnerable.

“Nat?” comes another, more gruff voice from the other side of the bed and Clint groans as he pushes himself up on his elbows. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Natasha says, because it’s technically the truth. Nothing is wrong, really, except that she’s tired, and she’s hurting, and she wants to feel safe and she knows there’s only one place in the world where that can happen. Clint frowns slightly before collapsing back onto the pillow. 

“C’mere,” he mutters as his hand snakes around Laura’s waist and Natasha lies fully back onto the pillow again, Laura’s arm reaching out to draw her closer. Natasha settles one hand over her breast, her fingers closing over Laura’s thin teeshirt, and Laura breathes out carefully as she tucks her head under Natasha’s chin.

It’s not that different, during the day – they flirt with each other and steal each other’s kisses and trade glances and cuddles when it’s appropriate to do so.  But Natasha knows that things are always better at night, when they’re entombed in darkness, when they can freely let their responsibilities and worries go, when they can be comfortable with each other knowing that they’re the only three people sharing one moment.

Natasha knows that things are always better at night, when she can say the words  _I love you_ and know that they’ll be reciprocated.


	14. Chapter 14

“Your child is calling,” Laura says as she puts Clint’s hand on her still-flat stomach, dragging his fingers against skin that will soon be stretched and enlarged; they’re lying on the floor in Laura’s apartment the night before moving into the farmhouse, pressed against each other for warmth because the heat’s already been turned off, a piece of paper with a messy set of tallied lines tacked to the wall with the stub of a broken arrow. (Laura swears it’s a girl. Clint can’t accept it won’t be a boy.)

“Your child is calling,” Laura says when Lila starts to scream, shrill wails that fill the small hospital room; Clint’s standing by the door in a pair of worn scrubs, Laura can see the tears in his eyes that he refuses to let go of until he comes closer and holds his daughter for the first time, squirming and red and fragile. (“I told you,” she whispers, her voice tinged with exhaustion, and when Clint smiles at her she thinks she might be the luckiest person in the world.)

“Your child is calling,” Laura says over the din of cries of a two-year-old, sitting on the kitchen floor across from Clint, broken bowls and plates littered between them like a minefield; she’s tired and she’s frustrated and she hasn’t slept in three days, he’s just walked through the door for the first time in three months and Lila doesn’t recognize the arms of the person trying to pick her up. (“I’m sorry,” he says later when he crawls into bed, kissing her gently and wiping away her tears. “I didn’t mean to stay away for so long.”) 

“Your child is calling,” Laura says as she reaches for a cinnamon colored apple, dark hair pulling itself out of her ponytail; Clint turns around to look at where Lila is sitting on the ground, reaching out for her father, and picks her up with two hands, placing her on his shoulders. (“You’re my  _favorite_  girl,” he says as he kisses her small leg and for once, Laura knows he’s not talking about her.)

“Your child is calling,” Laura says from the corner of the room, fingers closing around the bruises on her own arm; Clint’s shaking and short of breath and it’s not his wife he’s seen behind his eyes, it’s the freeze of ice blue, but she doesn’t know how to tell him that, and so she keeps her distance. (“You’re her father and she loves you,” Laura says, because this time it’s her turn to hold him as he cries. “Let her show it.”)

“Your child is calling,” Laura says the day after Clint returns from Sokovia, it’s only been 24 hours but he already looks like a different person, the exhaustion gone from his eyes and face, a kiss that’s more passionately sweet than desperate; Lila’s hanging off his waist and staring up at him as Laura unintentionally burns cider on the stove. (“I love you,” Clint tells her later when the movie is over, when Cooper and Lila have both fallen asleep on their parents’ legs, and Laura smiles. “I love you, too.”)  


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **"you did all of this for me?"**

“She hates birthdays,” Clint reminds Laura as he takes a pan out of the cupboard, and Laura shakes her head.

“This isn’t a birthday.”

“I know it’s not,” Clint says. “But it’s the same kind of idea, isn’t it? Celebrating a certain occasion, a certain day…”

“So, what?” Laura turns, brandishing a spoon, and Clint thinks that even with all of his SHIELD skills, Laura could probably still take him down with nothing but a wooden object. 

“So, I just…I don’t want to upset her. There are still things that trigger her in the wrong ways. She’s not used to this life.”

“This life is not something we’re imposing on her,” Laura reminds him, shaking her head. “She doesn’t  _have_  to keep coming here with you. But she does. And from what I know, it’s because she likes it here.”

“You’re implying you know my partner better than I do?”

Laura smiles. “Possibly. Just mix the icing, Clint. Once this cake cools, I need to start decorating it.”

“I thought that was kids’ job,” Clint complains, but he takes the spoon she holds out and starts stirring.

“It is,” Laura says. “ _They_  get to frost the cake.  _You,_ as the grown-up, get to mix it.”

Clint sighs. “You’re such a mom.”

“I know.” Laura kisses him and then finishes cleaning up the kitchen, putting small cups in the sink and baking supplies in the dishwasher. Once Clint has finished properly mixing the pink icing, Cooper and Lila take their places at the kitchen table, standing and sitting on chairs while dragging spatulas across the cake.

“Is Auntie Nat going to be surprised?” Lila asks hopefully, stray icing covering her nose and mouth from where she’s rubbed at her face. Laura smiles, taking a napkin to wipe it off.

“Hopefully,” she says, watching as Clint helps Cooper finish off the last section. “Lila, tell Nat to come downstairs, please? And if she’s sleeping, for the love of god, don’t jump on her to wake her up.”

Lila grins and takes off towards the stairs while Cooper sits back at the table and Clint ruffles his son’s hair. Five minutes later, Lila’s dragging a tired-looking, rumpled-haired Natasha into the kitchen.

“Lila, what -” Natasha’s voice stops as she sees the cake on the table, Cooper and Clint sitting down and Laura standing beside them. Lila tugs on Natasha’s hand gleefully, staring up at her.

“What’s this?” Natasha asks suspiciously, with a hint of caution.

“I know Clint said you don’t like to celebrate things,” Laura says, meeting his eyes. “But he reminded me that this is the day he first brought you to the farm, and we wanted you to feel like you had something to mark in your life that was maybe worth remembering.”

Natasha swallows and looks at Laura, then at Clint, then at the kids. “You did all this for me?”

“Well, it was Clint’s idea,” Laura says, waving her hand, trying to not focus on the way she can see the other woman’s eyes watering. “And the kids wanted to have a cake.”

“But Laura decided that we should make it a family thing,” Clint breaks in, standing up. “Because that’s what we do. And that’s what you are, Nat. No matter where you end up.”

Natasha nods slowly as Lila hugs her leg.

“Thank you.” She meets Laura and Clint’s eyes, and the three of them share a smile.

_Love you, too._


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **you did what?!**

“YOU DID WHAT?!”

“Okay, don’t get mad…”

Laura looks up, furrowing her brow. “You do realize that you saying those words in my presence almost always constitutes me yelling at you for what comes next, right?”

Clint looks a little guilty. “Hey, you gave me the same opening line when you got pregnant.”

“And then I told you I was having a child. Your child. I didn’t follow that up with the fact that I lost a thousand dollars at a casino in Vegas.”

“I was undercover,” Clint mutters and Laura sighs.

“I’m never letting Nat leave you alone again.” She pauses, making a final cross stitch. “Fine. What am I not getting mad about?”

Clint looks down and Laura rolls her eyes, poking him with her foot.

“Clint.”

“It’s about Natasha.”

“Okay,” Laura says slowly, rubbing her temples. “What about Natasha?”

“I sort of…okay, well,” and Clint swallows before starting to talk fast, as if he’s afraid he’ll get interrupted unnecessarily. “We were drinking after a mission and we went to this bar we always go to and I may have gotten a little too drunk, but, I mean, I was fine, not hungover or anything, Nat took care of me. But I guess I said a lot of things and I…kind of told her the next threesome could involve costumes.” He says the last words almost all in one sentence.

“Clint,” Laura says sharply, and the lazy poking from her foot turns into a sharp jab.

“Ouch, jesus!”

“Clint,” Laura repeats. “You did what?”

“I told her our next threesome could involve costumes,” Clint grumbles, rubbing a hand over his face. “Kind of hoped she would forget about it because of the drinking and all, but then she sent me this last night.” He takes out his phone and hands it over, and Laura’s eyes go wide.

“Oh, my god.” She shoves the phone back. “We are not doing a dominatrix thing.”

“Why not?” Clint asks, suddenly curious. “You said you were open to trying new things.”

“New things like sex moves, not this,” Laura says, waving her hands. She grabs for the phone again. “I’m telling Natasha that this is ridiculous. At least she listens to me.”

“Too late,” Clint says with a grimace. “I also got this.” He hands her the phone again, and Laura takes it with a sigh, staring at the FedEx tracking number in the email, along with a short message at the bottom.

Great idea, Barton. Hope these fit. Put it on SHIELD’s tab.

“Please don’t tell me those are -”

“Yeah,” Clint says a little apologetically. “Sorry, Laur. Those are fishnets.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **“If you die, I’m gonna kill you.”**

Clint’s halfway through his mission when he realizes that, in hindsight, this is an extremely bad idea.

Laura hasn’t bothered to talk him out of it - okay, that’s a lie, Laura  _had_  tried, but he hadn’t listened, because what did Laura know? Sure, she had grown up with three brothers, but it didn’t mean she knew  _exactly_  how to make pillow forts. That was Clint’s speciality, though he’s not going to boast that the only reason he got so good at it was because he and Barney needed to use it to hide from their abusive father.

“Clint, I love you, but let’s look at your track record,” Laura says during breakfast, gesturing to the house. “Unfinished projects all over the place because you’ve started something you realize you don’t have the tools to finish,  _plus_  nailing your hand into the wood last year while building the tree house.”

“And because of that, you’re worried about me and a  _pillow fort_?” Clint forces himself to feign a horrified tone but in all actuality, he feels downright insulted.

“I’m worried about my child killing you, not about you being able to put lumps of fabric back together,” Laura says shortly. Clint sighs.

“Come on, he’s been asking about this for weeks, and I’m finally home for more than a few days.”

Laura gives him a look before glancing into the living room, but leans over to kiss him, letting her lips linger on his cheek. 

“If you die in there, I’m gonna kill you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Clint grumbles, getting up. The structure’s held up pretty well, all things considered, though no one has actually thought to go inside of it until now.

“Daddy first!” Cooper says from where he’s sitting on the stairs, clapping paint-stained hands together. Laura raises an eyebrow, meeting his eyes, leaning against the archway to the kitchen.

“Well? What are you waiting for, Hawkeye?”

Clint ignores her and gets down on his knees, wincing against recent bruises. He crawls under the mess of blankets and pillows and couch cushions, until he’s decently far inside and it’s only when he decides to turn around that he discovers that there’s definitely not enough room for more than one person. It’s too late, though, and Cooper’s already started to clumsily make his way inside after his father.

Clint sees the start of the fort collapsing before everything comes crashing down, the remains of it landing on top of both him and Cooper, who lets out a delighted shriek as he tangles in the blankets. Clint grunts quietly as he lands hard on his back, and on his still-healing tailbone.

“If you think I’m rescuing you from in there, you’ve got another thing coming,” Laura says from somewhere to his left, and he can almost see the smirk on her face. 

“Fine,” he manages, grabbing Cooper around the waist and tickling his sides. “We’re good in here, anyway.”

Clint holds his son as he laughs, legs kicking against the discarded pillows, and when he finally emerges, they’re both smiling.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Nat takes the kids trick or treating**

“You sure you want to do this?”

Laura’s standing in the guest bedroom watching Natasha shrug into a long black coat that she’s stolen from their closet. Natasha nods.

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s just trick or treating…what could go wrong?”

“Nothing, except you haven’t been trick or treating with my kids,” Laura says with a smile. “Two kids and a baby, to be exact.”

“You think I can’t handle it?” Natasha asks as she applies lip gloss in the mirror, her eyebrow arching. Laura smirks.

“If it was Clint, I’d think probably not. But you’re another story.” She winks at Natasha and then leaves her alone in the room while she goes downstairs to finish getting her children ready for the night.

“Do you wanna build a snowman?” Lila asks hopefully when she reaches the living room, looking up at Laura while adjusting her princess dress and tiara. Cooper sighs next to her.

“It’s not winter yet.”

“That’s not the point,” Lila tells her brother defensively. “Elsa’s a  _snow_  queen. It’s winter all year long.”

“Please, don’t make Natasha start to hate this movie,” Laura says as she gives Cooper and Lila small bags for candy. Cooper, for his part, has decided this year is all about astronauts, the only perk of which Laura figured was the fact that he’d be warm inside the space suit she had made him.

“One chipmunk reporting for duty,” Clint says from the stairs as he walks down, holding a costumed Nate in one arm. The hood of the costume is slightly too big, draping forward over the baby’s forehead, and Laura smiles as Clint passes him over.

“Ten bucks he falls asleep before we leave the house,” Clint says as Natasha descends from the stairs in her witch costume, while Laura opens the door and secures Nate in the stroller on the porch. 

“It would make Nat’s job easier, at least,” she says as Clint whips out his cell phone, snapping pictures. Natasha steps forward to squeeze Laura’s shoulder.

“Relax,” she says. “You deserve some time alone tonight. And I haven’t had quality time with the kids in far too long.” She throws a glance to Clint, who smiles gratefully as he leads his other children outside.

“Remember the rules,” Laura says seriously as she surveys Cooper and Lila. “No ringing doorbells more than once. No taking each other’s candy. No running away from Auntie Nat. Okay?”

“Okay,” the kids chime while Nate yawns from his stroller. Laura shakes her head, waving an arm around.

“They’re all yours,” she says, helping Natasha bring the stroller down the porch steps, Cooper and Lila holding onto her costume with one hand while Natasha pushes Nate along.

“A witch, a queen, an astronaut and a chipmunk go trick or treating on a farm,” Clint says as he comes up behind Laura, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Now  _there’s_  a book I’d want to read.”

“Hmmm. Ask Natasha how she feels about that book when she gets home,” Laura says with a smile, kissing him gently as she watches her family walk off into the night.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **lila and cooper (nate is still a little young) go trick-or-treating at the avengers tower and the avengers compete on who gives the best treats.**

“Clint.”

“Relax, they’ll be fine.”

“Clint, our children are going to trick or treat at the  _Avengers Tower_.” Laura’s staring at him with an expression that he’d otherwise be scared of, had he not been married to her for over ten years and gotten looks worse than the ones she’s giving him, for worse reasons.

“Look, I really don’t see what the big deal is. This is how people get candy in New York, anyway. They go around to apartments in different buildings.”

“Apartment buildings, not superhero homes,” Laura says, rubbing her hands across her eyes. “How do I know Stark’s not going to open his door and give them mini stun guns?”

“Because Stark knows that if he comes within four inches of even trying to corrupt either of my kids, he gets an arrow in his eye,” Clint replies matter-of-factly. “And not just any arrow. The laser one he helped me design.”

Laura sighs again as she opens the door to the bedroom of they share, revealing Cooper and Lila sitting on the floor while Natasha finishes twisting Lila’s hair into thin braids.

“There,” she says with a flourish, kissing her gently. “Now you look just like Judy Garland.”

“Who’s Judy Garland?” Lila asks innocently as Laura hides a smile.

“She means you look like Dorothy,” Laura says, eyeing the checkered dress she had spent the past month working on. The ruby shoes had been a gift from Clint on one of his travels, that was a perk of Lila becoming obsessed with the  _Wizard of Oz_  and having a costume picked out months ahead of time. “Come on, Cooper. Time to get you guys some candy.”

“Yankees,” Clint mutters sardonically as Cooper bounds forward in his Derek Jeter uniform, swinging his foam bat. Laura grins.

“I can teach my children a lot of things, but you know I can’t teach my children which baseball team to pledge their loyalty to,” she says, ushering them out the door and towards the elevator. “They do that themselves.” Clint watches as the kids step inside the car, Cooper holding Lila’s hand tightly.

“Wait til my friends at home hear how I spent Halloween,” Lila says excitedly, pulling at her braid when they get off the lift. “Trick or treating in Avengers Tower.”

“You know they’re never gonna believe you,” Cooper responds. “Even if you say that dad lives here.”

“Whatever,” Lila responds, flinging a braid over her shoulder, skipping forward and knocking on the first door. “Trick or Treat!” She’s greeted by Steve Rogers, who regards them both with a smile, leaning against the frame.

“Dorothy Gale and Derek Jeter,” he says with an eyebrow raise. “There’s a pair if I ever saw one.” He reaches into a bowl and takes a handful of candy, depositing it into their bags. “Don’t tell your parents,” he adds with a wink as he drops two much larger candy bars in, and when Lila sees the size, her eyes grow big.

“Super-soldier sized,” he says with a wink and Cooper grins.

“Thanks, Cap!” He grabs his sister’s hand as they continue to the next floor, where Tony’s sitting on the couch working on some blue prints.

“Barton’s little monsters came to get candy, huh?” He asks when they approach him. Lila frowns.

“We’re not little monsters,” Lila says defiantly, and Tony raises an eyebrow.

“Right. Sorry, that’s Gaga. Sometimes I get your dad confused, the whole original costume thing and all…anyway.” He stops when he realizes both kids are staring at him blankly, and then takes some candy and puts it in Cooper and Lila’s bags. “Don’t tell your parents,” he says conversationally as he takes two glowing, blue candy bars out of his pocket and drops them wrapped bars into their bags. Cooper nods.

“Cool,” he declares, staring at the treat, before he drags his sister to the elevator. They take the lift the ground floor, where Bruce is working in his lab.

“I was wondering when you’d get to me,” he says, looking up from his glasses and handing over some mini M&Ms. “Don’t tell your parents about these,” he says as he gives them two chocolates that are weirdly shaped and also over-sized.  “And these are from Thor,” he adds, turning around and dropping two even bigger items in their bags. They clank heavily and noisily against each the other candy, and Lila beams.

“These look  _awesome_.”

Natasha’s their last stop on their Tower rounds when they get back to their own room, which Clint is increasingly put out about – him and Laura had decided they wouldn’t participate in the game, seeing as to how their kids would probably get more than enough candy from their friends.

“No fair,” he pouts when they come back to the room, knocking on the door which Natasha opens. She gives ignores him while giving them candy to a chorus of, “thanks, Auntie Nat!” and when Clint’s walked away, she takes two more candy bars decorated with their names and puts them in their bag.

“Don’t tell your parents,” she whispers, kissing Lila on the nose before ushering the kids head into the bedroom, where Clint and Laura are waiting.

“So, what’s the haul?” Laura asks as Cooper and Lila climb on the bed with Natasha, watching them dump their bags and go through them on the bed. Cooper frowns.

“Lots of candy! And lots of cool things we were told not to tell you about.”

“Excuse me?” Laura raises an eyebrow and Lila shrugs, sifting through her own treasures.

“Super-sized Mars Bars from Cap. Some weird looking shape thing from Dr. Banner. Tony gave us these really cool light up candies!” Cooper takes one and examines it while Lila brings it to her mouth, and Clint snatches it away.

“Do  _not_  eat whatever you got from Tony,” he says, as Lila pouts. “Not before I check it. What else?”

“Let’s see…” Cooper looks down again. “Thor gave us candies that feel like gold! And personalized candy bars with our names on them and our favorite colors from Nat! I think that wins.”

“I like the weird shaped candy,” Lila decides. “It’s cool.”

“Did my kids seriously get suckered into a competition over who can give the better candy?” Clint asks no one in particular, staring at the bags, and Laura rolls her eyes.

“Did you expect anything different?”

Clint groans, and then notices Natasha’s hiding a smile. “Nat?”

“Oh, come on.” She shrugs. “I have to admit, it was fun trying to see Bruce decide what he could make that would outdo Tony’s laser-infused chocolate.”

“Laser-infused –”

“Relax, they’re harmless. I tried one earlier and didn’t die.”

“That means we can eat it,” Lila declares, tearing into Tony’s gift. “Auntie Nat says they’re safe and Auntie Nat always knows when things are dangerous.” She shoves half of the bar in her mouth and then crawls along the bed, situating herself in Clint’s lap and giving him a hug.

“This is officially the best Halloween  _ever_.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **lila wants to dress up as black widow for halloween. cue natasha having an existential crisis.**

Lila announces it at breakfast, right after she’s asked Clint if she can play outside with her new toys.

“I wanna be Auntie Nat for Halloween.”

Laura freezes with a coffee cup halfway to her lips and Clint jerks his head up from the newspaper he’s reading while Natasha drops her toast on the floor.

“Halloween isn’t until next month,” Laura reminds her daughter gently, breaking the sudden silence, and, Natasha thinks, speaking so she doesn’t have to answer just yet. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Lila looks far too happy. “I wanna be Auntie Nat and wear a cool suit and be a superhero!”

Laura passes Clint a look that Natasha plainly recognizes as  _see what happens when you agree to tell your daughter the truth about what you do for a living_ and Clint, to his credit, does look a little guilty, but shrugs. 

“Maybe you should ask Auntie Nat’s permission before you decide to dress up as her,” Clint reminds his daughter. “Remember your manners that we talked about?”

“Okay.” Lila nods seriously and then turns around in her seat, meeting Natasha’s eyes with a wide grin. “Auntie Nat, can I be you for Halloween?”

Half of Natasha wants to scream and the other half wants to cry and she knows both of those reactions aren’t appropriate for the child that just wants to dress up as someone she cares about, so in lieu of not knowing how else to respond, she smiles tightly across the table.

“Of course.”

-

“She wants to be me. Why?”

Clint raises his eyebrow. “I cannot believe you just asked me that question. You do realize if my daughter had a choice she’d probably live with you over us.”

Natasha chews on her bottom lip, a habit she knows he hates. “Living with me is one thing. Playing with me is one thing. Wanting to…be me? Walking around looking like me for fun?” She shakes her head. “People don’t do that, Clint.”

“Well, they should.” Clint puts a dish in the drying rack. “You’re a lot hotter than Thor or Stark.”

“I think what my idiot husband is trying to say,” Laura breaks in from where she’s cleaning out the fridge, “is that there’s no reason people shouldn’t be looking at you the same way they look at all your other teammates. You’re just as valuable, Nat. You prove that every time you go into the field.”

Natasha looks down, clutching her mug of tea tighter, letting her fingers whiten around the edges. “It’s not that I don’t think I’m valuable,” she says finally, her voice low. “I love that she wants to do this. But I’m not a hero. I’m not someone that should be paraded around as a savior, just because I turned my life around. And it’s…it’s your daughter, Clint. This isn’t some dumb parade of people I don’t know. This is personal.”

There’s a long silence, and then she hears Clint sigh.

“Look, I won’t be the one to tell her yes or no,” he says. “But if you really don’t want her to do this, it should come from the person she looks up to. Not me.” 

Natasha meets his eyes and smiles a little sadly. “I know,” she says quietly, sitting back in her chair, unable to stop the thoughts rolling through her mind. “What if I disappoint her?”

“I think the world would end before you could disappoint my daughter,” Laura remarks, getting up and coming around to the other side of the table. She puts a hand on Natasha’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. “But Clint’s right. If you don’t want to do this, you need to be the one to tell her.”

Natasha nods slowly, and continues to drink her tea while Clint and Laura clean up the kitchen in silence. Some hours later, when Natasha finds Lila playing outside, she joins her without speaking, sitting down on the porch and taking a toy truck as Lila arranges a play house.

“Why do you want to dress up as me?” Natasha asks as gently as she can, watching Lila assemble a small family at a table. Lila looks up and smiles, moving closer to Natasha, and there’s something in her eyes that Natasha recognizes as genuine and honest and innocent.

“Cause you’re Auntie Nat. Cause I love you as Auntie Nat.”

(One month later, Lila stands in the living room dressed in a small black leotard with an hourglass at the center, a short red wig hiding her long brown hair, beaming up at Natasha as she helps her tie her shoes. “I’m going to be the best superhero ever,” she says as Clint readies the camera to take her picture.

When the little girl hugs her, Natasha’s pretty sure she’s never felt luckier.)


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **NATASHA has never seen Casablanca. Clint is appalled. Laura sighs.**

Natasha walks into the bathroom while Clint is in the middle of taking off his shirt.

“Jesus, you could’ve knocked,” he mutters once he’s recovered from the overpowering fear of seeing one of his children standing behind him rather than his partner. Natasha snorts dismissively.

“I stopped knocking the first time I walked in on you and Laura having shower sex,” she says conversationally, eyeing Clint’s naked torso. “I’m not about to start now.”

“Right,” Clint says with a resigned sigh. “Wouldn’t want you to change at all.” He reaches over and grabs a towel, and Natasha smirks.

“Ask Laura if she wants company.”

“Nat!”

“I wouldn’t mind company,” Laura responds a little thoughtfully from the other side of the shower curtain, before peering around the thin cloth. Her dark hair is plastered to her shoulders, heavy and wet, and there’s parts of her upper body that are peeking out from behind the covering.

“You’re ruining my night,” Clint says a little dejectedly and Natasha turns around, taking off her own clothes as she talks.

“You say that as if you can’t get into the shower  _with_  us.” She shakes her head, dropping her pants and stepping out of her underwear. “Honestly, Clint. Sometimes I think Nate’s smarter than you, and he can’t even talk yet.”

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine,” Clint mutters under his breath as Natasha reaches for the shower curtain. She looks up, furrowing her brow.

“What?”

“Ugh.” Clint groans. “Nevermind. It’s from Casablanca.”

“Oh.” Natasha considers this, pausing for a brief second before opening the shower curtain further to step inside the tub. “I’ve never seen Casablanca.”

 _“You’ve never seen Casablanca?!”_  

“Clint,” Laura says with a sigh, pulling the other girl over the ledge and Natasha groans over the rushing water.

“Please tell me when the hell would I have had time to catch up on classic movies in between joining SHIELD and getting brainwashed and saving your ass?”

“Who cares? It’s like a rite of passage,” he argues, pulling the curtain back again as water spills onto the tiled floor. Laura jerks her hand away from where she’s been kneading Natasha’s back.

“ _Clint,_ ” she says sharply as he steps into the shower, leaning back against the wall.

“Sorry. I’ll clean it up. But I’m serious. Have you even seen any classic films?”

Natasha looks appalled at his question. “Of course I have,” she snaps. “Gone With The Wind, Citizen Kane, The Godfather…I’m not  _that_  uneducated.”

“Still,” Clint grumbles, only a little satiated by her response. “I can’t believe you know all the words to The Incredibles and can sing that damn Frozen winter song and yet you’ve never seen one of the greatest films of our time.”

“I know those things because when I’m here, I’m sitting around with your kids half the time, and they don’t exactly watch sophisticated cinema while they eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” Natasha says sharply while Laura remains silent, going back to massaging Natasha’s skin. Clint makes a face and steps forward.

“I totally just found our next movie night.”

Laura rolls her eyes.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Send me a “Come back” and I’ll write a drabble about character asking the other to return (they parted after a fight, the other has been missing for a while, etc)**

It’s hard to sleep at night now.

She’s not used to it, because she’s never had a problem sleeping, not even when Clint was running off and not telling her where he was going, not even when he was coming home in the middle of the night with broken bones, patching himself up in the bathroom while trying not to make noise (he always made noise) and then leaving again.

Laura worried – of course Laura worried – but she was confident and she was strong and she generally managed to get through life with and without Clint while keeping her emotions intact. The few sleepless nights she did have over the years were for other reasons: her children waking up with nightmares, babies crying in the middle of the night, Natasha coming to visit and breaking in because she lost her key (again) and old assassin habits die hard.

But this time, it’s different.

The Raft breakout was a week ago. She hasn’t heard from him since before he left for Germany. The last thing he had said to her was a garbled message that meant “I love you” in code before he went off to fight his friends and some army of super soldiers. She wakes up every morning, tired and weary, and sits by the window, hoping for a note, a sign, a phone call.

Anything.

Natasha is next to her, and it’s a comfort. For as much as Natasha was her other half in every single way, she’s never stayed at the house permanently, except when they first lived together, when they all met after Clint joined SHIELD. Natasha knew this was her home but preferred for her own means to be transient. Since coming home from the Raft, she hadn’t left Laura’s side, except to run errands and take care of Cooper and Lila and Nate.

Sometimes, she wakes up to Natasha’s kisses. Other times, she’s the one kissing Natasha when she’s worried about something she can’t say. Sometimes, they hold each other and don’t say anything at all, because they understand all they need is to be comforted, because the one person they love is out there either hiding from the world, or too scared to come home.

 _Come back_ , she writes on letters that she doesn’t send, putting them into a box that she keeps in the closet. _Please come back. We need you._

She waits.

When Natasha wakes up, she finds Laura sitting by the window, and they hold hands while staring out at the open fields surrounding the farm.

And they wait together.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Send me a “Hold” and I’ll write a drabble about one character just wanting to hug the other.**

“You don’t remember, do you?”

Clint tears his gaze away from Natasha’s body, which has been unmoving for the past hour, save for the steady rise and fall of her back. “Remember what?”

Laura takes his hand and squeezes it gently. “The way you acted the first time I asked you to hold me.”

Clint remembers – he remembers Laura asking, in a trembling voice so unlike the Laura he’d fallen in love with and known, the one who yelled at him for snoring and gave him the eyebrow raise that forced him to do the laundry at 4am when Cooper was still a baby – he remembers how he held out his arms and tried to comfort her. He remembers how she had shied away.

“You didn’t let me hold you.”

“No,” Laura says, but her voice doesn’t sound sad. “I didn’t.”

Clint looks back down at Natasha. She’d be out for awhile; the dosage of sedation he had given her was strong, even by his standards.

“She didn’t let me hold her either.”

“Not yet,” Laura says smartly, putting her head on his shoulder. She had taken as much of a backseat as she could when Clint had walked through the door fighting and wrestling with his clearly incapacitated partner, staying out of the way despite her urge to help. Clint was relieved that she could tell, from the way Natasha was acting, that this wasn’t Natasha. Her wary look, when he had managed to piece her suit with a needle, confirmed as much.

“You know that wasn’t her,” Laura continues. “She would have let you. Don’t you remember?”

Clint remembers – he remembers Natasha asking, in a trembling voice so unlike the Natasha he’d fallen in love with and known, the one who yelled at him for going into the field unarmed and gave him the potent glare that forced him to admit that he wasn’t okay – he remembers how he held out his arms and tried to comfort her.

He remembers how she let him.

“She’s always let me.” He blinks slowly. “From the first day I saved her. I was the only one.”

Laura falls silent, and then walks slowly towards Natasha, bending down near her still form. She holds out her hand, and Clint stares at her.

“Come hold her,” she says softly, with all the understanding and respect that she’s always been able to muster, even when he hasn’t been able to return the favor. Clint kneels down and gathers her in his arms, cradling her to his chest. She won’t remember being held, or being touched, or being taken care of – she won’t remember any of it when she wakes up.

But she will.

(“You held me,” she’ll say, groggy and hoarse, her voice a whisper. “I told you not to.”

“Yeah,” Clint admits, stroking her hair. “You did. But when has that ever stopped us?”)


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Claura, whatever "This is real"**

Laura never liked make believe. Laura was a practical girl; she preferred math to writing, history to space, debate to dance club. Santa Claus was a marketing ploy she never bought into; the Easter bunny was nothing more than a strange man in a large furry suit and her mother dropping chocolate and heart-shaped cards into her basket every morning before school when she was little.

Laura never liked make believe. Laura was a practical girl; she preferred all her dates to be honest and open before she let them into her home to learn more about her, when all of her friends sat in a circle at summer camp and talked about their fairytale weddings and white dresses and picture-perfect vows on the beach in Hawaii, Laura rolled her eyes while hiding her nose in a book because she knew that was never going to happen to her, or to any of the girls who fancied themselves to be a dreamer.

Laura never liked make believe, but it wasn’t because she was too cynical to believe in the imaginative mind. She simply liked to find pleasures in things that she knew were, for better or for worse, real. 

Like,

Clint slipping the ring on her finger, and she loves him so much she’ll even forgive the fact he shot an arrow at the tree she loved to read under with a note and a box, like a regular day Robin Hood. Like,

The day after their wedding, eloping in Vegas and then driving to the Grand Canyon and having a picnic on the rocks overlooking the sunset. Like,

Holding her stomach, still flat and pure, a pregnancy test with positive stripes lying on the bedside table next to her. Like,

The first time she visits Clint in the hospital, monitors beeping and tubes snaking out of his body; she’s undecided whether she’s happy he’s alive or terrified that those things are keeping him alive. Like,

Cooper taking his first breaths and crying loudly in the delivery room before being placed in her arms, six pounds and seven ounces of a squirming infant ready to be loved by two parents who cared about his happiness more than anything in the world. Like,

Natasha breaking into their house the day after Clint lets her go so she can go back to SHIELD, dripping rainwater onto the floor of the re-tiled living room and admitting she came back because she had nowhere else to go and this was the only place she felt safe.

“You can stay here,” Laura had told her. “This is real.”

Like,

Watching aliens fall out of the sky and being transfixed by the unending news coverage and please, be okay, please be okay, no Coop, daddy’s fine, Lila eat your breakfast, mommy’s just not feeling well and that’s why she’s crying.

Getting an encrypted phone call from Maria Hill about SHIELD’s fall and Hydra’s reign and Clint’s okay, he’s going to stay undercover, call Natasha if you need anything.

Receiving a text that says “got hit in sokovia, fin3” and staring in fondness at the typo for the letter “e” because sometimes when he was distracted he couldn’t type properly, before screaming at an empty house until her lungs ache, because why is it always her husband that gets hurt, and curse his big heart for never allowing himself to stand down.

Like,

Watching Clint walk in the door after burying Pietro Maximoff and dropping his bag and remembering what he had said about “last project” as she hugs him tightly, not wanting to let go.

“Is this real?” Laura asks, because after so many years, she needs to know. She can deal with betrayals and secret meetings and arrows being shot at her with a note about coming to dinner and spy-assassins-turned-friends who now sang her children lullabies, but she can’t deal with the pretend, the make believe, the “I’m here but I’ll always need to go back,” the “I promise I’ll be safe,” the “don’t worry, I’ll never leave you alone.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, and when he kisses her, Laura knows he means it. “This is real.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **stroking hair**

**I. Natasha**

“What’s eating you?”

Natasha looks up as Laura enters the living room, unaware she’s apparently been giving off a sour look. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Laura cocks her head, her gaze careful, and Natasha can practically see the hesitancy in her eyes. She doesn’t blame her. Laura’s nowhere near being able to use the word “comfortable” when it comes to Natasha, but she’s been acting more and more amicable towards Clint partner since he brought her home a few months ago.

“Just stupid work stuff,” Natasha says finally, leaning back on the couch. “It’s fine. I don’t want to bother you.”

“I’m not bothered,” Laura says, pushing her hair back from her shoulders, and Natasha finds herself wondering how Laura’s hair would feel between her fingers. _Stop that_ , she immediately chastises herself. Laura was her partner’s husband, a wholesome and innocent girl who was trying to be nice, not a mark or a potential intimate conquest.

“Like I said, forget about it.” Natasha gets up off the couch, striding past Laura in an abrupt manner. She walks upstairs, and when she enters the guest bedroom, she’s surprised to find Clint asleep on her bed.

Natasha opens her mouth to yell at him, even though it is his house, but then she takes into account the fact that they had barely slept since coming home from their latest mission. She lets a fond smile play over her lips at the sound of her partner’s snoring, and then carefully toes off her shoes and curls up next to him, eager to take the stress of the day away by napping. Clint grunts in his sleep, but doesn’t stir, and Natasha knows it’s because he’s used to her touch by now.

When Laura comes into the room, Natasha’s nearly asleep. But she feels the electiricty that shoots through her body when Laura reaches over to stroke her hair, and then Clint’s hair, as if they’re her children or her lovers.

Natasha smiles in her sleep, and realizes Laura’s touch feels like home.

 

**II. Clint**

The thing is, Clint knows this was a bad idea. He knows this was a TERRIBLE idea. Jumping off the roof of a building was dumb in of itself, but jumping with an already bum ankle from a previous injury was even dumber. It had been pure luck that Natasha had managed to throw him a grappling hook arrow at the last minute, which he’d used to cushion his fall.

So when he cracks open one eye in the med bay and sees Laura glaring, and then cracks open the other eye to see Natasha’s tightly drawn face, he’s not really surprised. He knows he deserves it.

“How stupid?” he manages to rasp out. Laura snorts.

“I’ll let Natasha answer that one,” she says, her words clipped. Clint groans.

“Tasha?”

“Stupid,” Natasha spits out. “Incredibly, entirely, IRRATIONALLY stupid, Clint! Why didn’t you just call me for back-up?”

“You were busy,” he mumbles. Natasha pokes his arm, hard, exacerbating a bruise there.

“You were _dumb_ ,” she retaliates. “You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

“Nah,” Clint says, though everything hurts a little too much. “Unless this is heaven. A bad version of heaven.”

“If you think you’re going to heaven without having either of us there to yell at you, you’re dead wrong,” Natasha says, and Laura manages to laugh despite the anger and worry Clint knows she still carries. “You signed that deal with the devil the day that you met me.”

“Fair enough.” He closes his eyes again, and then there’s a dip in the bed. He smells Laura’s floral handwash as she drags her fingers through his dirty, matted hair, and then he reaches out until he can touch Natasha, who has laid down next to him on the other side.

“That’s a deal I can live with.”

 

**III. Laura**

Laura stands in the bathroom, staring at the pregnancy test, her eyes filling with tears that can’t seem to fall.

“Laur?” Clint pushes open the door with Natasha on his heels, who looks concerned. “Everything okay?”

Laura shakes her head; she had bolted from the dinner table after a realization hit her while Clint and Natasha were having one of their patented playful arguments that would probably end in sex later and she can’t blame them for wondering if she’d been upset with them.

“Laura?” Natasha pushes past Clint, her green eyes narrowed in worry. She gasps quietly when she looks down and sees the pregnancy test that’s loosely grasped in Laura’s hand.

“Laura.” Clint’s voice is soft and awed, and it breaks on the last letter. Laura does let herself go at that, the tears tumbling down her cheeks as she sinks to the floor. In an instant, Clint and Natasha are on either side of her, hugging her tightly and rubbing her back. 

“I didn’t think we could do it,” she says brokenly. “I thought…we couldn’t do it. And we did it.”

Clint laughs quietly, threading his hand through her hair. “Yeah,” he says, kissing her, looking at the positive pregnancy test. “We did.”

Natasha puts her lips on Laura’s cheek and runs her hands through her dark hair, and for a long while, there are no words between them, because there doesn’t have to be.

There’s only touch, and love.

 


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **i don’t know what the fuck true love even is but i do want to hang out with you for basically the rest of my life. (let’s hang out - TO THE DEATH)**

Laura doesn’t expect much the first time she meets Clint.

It’s a blind date, of sorts – Laura’s brother works in SHIELD, and he’s been trying to set this guy up with someone – but Laura doesn’t find herself that excited or even interested at the prospect of meeting a “secret agent.” She goes anyway, though, and is surprised that Clint is nothing like the guy she had envisioned from her brother’s description.

He’s actually much worse.

His jokes are terrible, and his taste in food is totally bland for someone who Laura knows has spent years traveling the world. (He tells her it’s because after so many years of trying new things, he likes to stick to the basics when he’s home.) He talks too much and doesn’t let her get a word in edgewise, and absolutely insists they order too much food.

“I don’t think this guy is for me,” Laura admits to her brother when she gets home and gets on the phone. “He’s nice, but he’s just…not my type. And I don’t even know if I want a boyfriend.”

“Give him a chance,” her brother implores. “Maybe he didn’t make a good first impression, but I promise he’s a great guy.”

Laura goes on a second date with Clint, and this time, she’s the one who does all the talking. She figures he’ll be disinterested, that she’ll bore his “secret agent” mind with tales of her non-profit work, and then maybe she’ll feel better about the fact that they have nothing in common. 

But Clint listens intently as she describes meeting with the people who she works with, and offers his own stories about his coworkers. This time, instead of feeling like she can’t break into the conversation, Laura finds herself laughing along with his stupid jokes, and taking notice of the way his eyes light up when he smiles.

“So, will I see you again?” he asks hopefully when they finally part ways. Laura bites down on a smile.

“I think so,” she says quietly, taking his phone from his hand and putting her number in. She hands it back with a wink. “Call me.”

Their first kiss is while they’re stranded in the car waiting for AAA to come save them from a flat tire. Their first “I love you” is while they’re running through the rain, soaked and out of breath, after getting caught in a downpour on the way to a restaurant. When they’re safely inside, pushing rainwater out of their eyes and hair off their faces, Clint turns to her and his face becomes serious.

“You said I love you.”

“I –” Laura blinks. “Yeah. I guess I did.” She searches his face, suddenly feeling nervous. “Is…did I do something wrong?”

Clint shakes his head quickly, shedding water. “No. No, I mean, I love you too, it’s just…we haven’t been dating that long, and I know I’m not the perfect guy, and I didn’t think you even liked me that much when we first met, and I don’t want you to make a mistake –”

“I’m not making a mistake,” Laura interrupts, grabbing his hand. “I love you, and maybe I’ve never really felt in love before, but I want to be with you. Even if you’re a secret agent for the rest of your life.”

Clint looks down at the floor. “You don’t want to go on these adventures with me,” he says. “I mess everything up. And they’re dangerous.”

“I like danger,” Laura responds, finding his eyes. “And you. And I don’t care how much you mess things up. I just want to _do_ things with you.”

“Together?” Clint asks tentatively. Laura squeezes his hand.

“Together.”

Six months later, Laura is cleaning up her apartment, cooking dinner and walking around with a glass of red wine. Clint comes home looking drained, and drops his bag on the floor before going to take a shower. When he comes out, Laura’s sitting on the couch, and she opens her arms invitingly.

“Tell me about your day,” she says as he sits down, curling up in his lap. “And tell me what our adventure is this weekend.”

 


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **So many of those feel like Clint in my head so maybe Clint + Nat? Or Clint + Nat + Laura?**

By the time Natasha gets home from work, she already wants to kill something. But she’s already spent the past two hours at the gym sparring, and then she took an impromptu detour to the basement of SHIELD to do some shooting with the new guns, and short of actually killing someone, she doesn’t know how else she can relieve her stress. 

So she’s surprised when she gets back to her apartment and breathes in the smell of fresh pot roast.

“This is unexpected,” she remarks as she takes in the carefully set table and clean living room. Laura emerges from the small kitchen holding two glasses of wine.

“Maria told me you had a bad day. I got off early and was able to take my paperwork home, so I figured you could use a distraction.”

Natasha smiles gratefully. “What kind of distraction?” She’s looking at the wine Laura is holding but she drops her voice seductively, and doesn’t miss the goosebumps that rise along Laura’s arm.

“That remains to be seen.” Laura winks. “You think an assassin plays her games this easily?”

“I’m an assassin, too,” Natasha reminds her, stepping closer and running her fingers through Laura’s hair. “I know how you play games, Laura.”

Laura leans forward and kisses her. “So tell me why you were so upset,” she says when she breaks away. “Do I have to go yell at Nick again?”

Natasha sighs. “Not exactly,” she says, rubbing her eyes tiredly as she takes the wine from Laura. “I got an assignment off the grid. Guy who used to work for AIM, went rogue, and is now undercover at some circus. He’s been evading everyone at SHIELD for months and they think I can bring him in –” She breaks off when she notices Laura’s looking at her in puzzlement. “What?”

Laura doesn’t say anything, but puts her wine down on the table. She disappears into the bedroom and emerges with a file, which she holds out to Natasha. Natasha looks at her curiously, and then takes the file, opening it up. Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead and into her hairline.

“Wait, you’ve been hired to kill this guy, too?!”

“Unless I was magically handed the wrong mission before I left work,” Laura says, nodding towards the file. Natasha groans.

“Fuck. That means it’s gonna be a bitch of a job.”

“Which we get to do together,” Laura says, nudging her foot. “Maybe we can make it a competition.”

Natasha can’t help but share Laura’s grin. “He is kind of cute,” she admits, staring at the photo in the file again. “Maybe instead of killing him, we can entice him with a job offer.”

“Hmmm.” Laura winks at Natasha, and slips her hand under her skirt. “Maybe. Think this Clint Barton guy likes threesomes?”

 


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **the usual three, playing cards or a board game or something**

“This is not how I expected our first mission to go,” Clint says, peering out the window at the whiteout that’s happening in front of his eyes. He cringes, he can practically see the snow starting to fall harder as he speaks.

“Isn’t that what you said about Bucharest?”

Clint turns around and glares at Natasha across the small cabin. “You’re being extremely calm about this whole thing.”

Natasha shrugs. “We’re trapped here, we can’t get out until tomorrow, and the kids are fine. They’re with Laura’s parents, right?”

Clint looks at Laura, who is biting her nails across the room, shivering slightly in the blanket Natasha’s given her. He can’t tell if she’s shaking from cold, which is likely, or from fear, which is less likely, if only because Laura’s never been afraid of anything. 

“This is not how I expected our first mission to go,” he repeats, walking over and squatting down in front of Laura. He brushes hair back from her face with his cold hand. 

“Worried about me?” Laura asks quietly, her lips straining into a smile. Clint smiles back.

“Yeah,” he admits. “When I said I wanted to show you what we do, I didn’t mean…well…”

“What? Taking me to the most remote safe house ever? Or trapping me here with a blizzard?”

“Both,” Clint says, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. “Seriously, you okay? I know we didn’t exactly plan for this.” In theory, all they had planned was a day trip to the cabin so Natasha and Clint could show Laura what one of their safe houses looked like. They hadn’t planned to spend the night somewhere, nor had they planned to spend the night in a place with no heat, while a random rogue blizzard kept them holed up.

_“A relationship bonding exercise,”_ Natasha had jokingly called the adventure, since they had pretty much just embraced their polyamorous relationship. Well, they were bonding, alright.

“I’ll be fine,” Laura says, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Besides, three-way cuddling, remember?”

Clint laughs. “Only if you agree to be in the middle so we can take care of you.”

“No.” Laura shakes her head. “You have the most muscle and body heat. _You_ sleep in the middle.”

“I have an idea.” Natasha’s voice cuts through their conversation, and Clint looks up to find her standing in front of them, holding a thick stack of cards. “We can pass the time by playing poker. Loser has to cuddle in the middle, even if they’re the smallest.” She winks at Laura. “Come on. What else are we going to do, sit here while Clint worries himself so much he pees his pants?”

“Hey!” Clint says indignantly. “That only happened once!” 

Laura laughs shakily, and Natasha sits down on the floor. 

“You deal, Barton.”

“Why me?”

“Because if I do it, you’ll be saying I cheated. Like you always do when we decide who wears the strap-on during sex.”

“I’m _still_ skeptical about how that always ends up being you,” he mutters as he finishes dealing the cards. Laura’s sitting as close as she possibly can to Clint without actually being in his lap, though she keeps her head turned away from his hands so she can’t see what he’s holding as they start to play.

“Shit,” mutters Clint when Natasha finally puts down a pair of aces. He takes another card, assesses his strategies, and says a quick prayer, because he has no idea how well Laura’s fared. “Four of a kind. Laur?”

“Royal. Fucking. Flush.” Laura smirks, blowing out a puff of breath with each word, and even Natasha looks impressed.

You really wanted to be in the middle, didn’t you?” Clint asks as Laura drops the cards, snuggling into him. “Guess I can’t argue with that.”

“See?” Natasha’s already taken off most of her clothes, and pulls the blanket Laura’s been using over own body, pressing up against her, and kisses her cheek. “I’m not the only one who always wins, in the end.”

 


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **‘I’m meant to kill you but I’ve been watching you for a week to work out how and you’re just too nice.’ AU**

“She’s a liability. She’s definitely a liability.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and focuses on what she can see through the trees: a crookedly placed cabin, a beat-up truck, and a woman with soft brown hair who putters around the falling-down porch picking up twigs.

“Look at her, Clint. She’s a housewife. She’s not a threat.”

“You clearly didn’t read your handbook,” he grumbles from his spot next to her; they’re both perched delicately in the branches of the large oak, their faces and weapons shielded by leaves. “ _These_  people are the ones who we never suspect, and they’re the most dangerous because no one knows how lethal they are.”

“And I thought I was the one who was supposed to be paranoid,” Natasha mutters, training her eyes on the woman again. It’s their fifth stake-out of the week, and she’s both surprised and suspicious – she can’t imagine the woman had no idea she was being watched. But they had no other choice. The mission had come in almost a week ago, detail on a girl who escaped from Russia’s Red Room and committed deeply intense crimes across the country, before disappearing off the grid years ago. She had finally resurfaced thanks to some intense detective work; sketchy surveillance photos had tracked her to a cabin in the middle of the Adirondacks and while they were on their way over, the second call had come in, clear and curt in their comms.

“If she gives you trouble, shoot to kill.”

“She’s not normal,” Clint argues, and, well, Natasha had to admit that was true. She’s known assassins, even former assassins, and this woman seemed to carry herself in a way that wasn’t familiar to Natasha. She fed birds and chopped her own firewood and drank tea and wrote in a journal. If she had lived a life of crime and murder and lying, well…she was definitely in some headspace that Natasha wants to get info about because it just wasn’t _normal_.

“Laura might not even be her real name,” he continues. “I bet it’s a cover, after she left Russia. It’s way too innocent.”

“Is it, _Clinton_?” Natasha deadpans. She hides a smirk as he glares at her. “Look, all we’ve seen her do over the past few days is cook and clean and replenish her goddamn bird feeder. What are we supposed to do, shoot her in the head while she’s listening to NPR?”

“I thought you were the one who had no problem being morally corrupt,” Clint points out. Natasha sighs quietly; Clint was a dichotomy of abandoning orders when he wanted to but following through when he was wishy-washy about feelings.

"We don’t have to use weapons,” Clint suggests after a moment. “We could slip something in her tea, or start a fire.”

“Both of those things involve actually breaking protocol and showing ourselves,” Natasha replies. “And I still don’t think this is the right course of action. She’s just…too _nice_.”

“You’ve definitely been watching too many PG-rated spy movies,” Clint announces, keeping his gaze on Laura. She’s now doing yoga on the porch, and Natasha finds herself strangely fascinated at the fluid way her body moves in the shadows.

“Garrote?”

“Too messy.”

Natasha frowns. “Arrow?”

“I thought you didn’t want to use weapons.”

Natasha closes her eyes and counts to ten, trying to temper her annoyance. In the silence, Laura’s voice rings out, clear and light.

“If you’re hungry, I’ve got some brownies in the oven. You’ve been watching me for a week, so why don’t you come in and make yourself at home?”

 


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **I wish you would write a fic where Guardians of the Galaxy's ship crash-lands at Barton Farm.**

Clint’s finally managed to doze off and revel in some good, actual, “I’m not going to be interrupted for at least three hours by a baby screaming, because he’s so tired he’s actually knocked himself out so literally the only way I’ll get disturbed is if he pees himself” sleep when a loud crash from outside sends him flying into panic, sitting up and grabbing the handgun he keeps in the side table. Before he’s even managed to wrap his head around the fact that he’s gone into defensive mode on instinct, Laura’s flinging open the door with a worried look on his face.

“Clint!”

“Daddy!”

He lowers the gun when Cooper rushes in behind his mom, dropping it before his son can get too scared at the sight of his dad with a weapon inside their house. 

“Something crashed outside,” he says calmly, glancing at the window. He looks at Cooper, who is standing silently beside Laura with wide eyes. “Stay here with mom, okay? I’ll let you know if it’s okay to come out.”

Cooper nods slowly and Laura takes his hand, pulling him onto the bed as Clint closes the door to the bedroom and walks downstairs. His house is quiet, which means nothing – intruders could be hiding anywhere; he’s been around the block enough to know this. Through the large living room window, he sees a trail of smoke rising from somewhere between the big trees in the yard, and he opens the door with a frown. He can see the smoke more clearly now, and he can hear distant voices, but there’s still no one around. Clint’s skin starts to crawl.

“Hello!”

The sound of Lila’s voice, joyful and cheery, cuts through Clint’s thoughts and he whips his head around to see his daughter crouched near the ground, waving at something he can’t see.

“I Am Groot.”

Lila laughs and then waves wildly at the ground. “Hello, Groot!”

“I Am Groot.”

“Look, kid, we’re not here to play games,” says another voice, this one rough and angry. “Don’t you have a parent or something?”

“Yes,” Clint says sharply, striding into view. He really should feel more strange about the fact that he’s looking at a talking raccoon and a barely three-foot tall tree with an (admittedly cute) face, but, well – he _was_ an Avenger. It wasn’t the oddest thing he’d seen over the years.

“Oh, good. For a moment I was worried we’d have to abduct some random kid.”

“Our ship crashed here,” interrupts a green-skinned woman, who appears before Clint and steps into his space, holding up her hands as he protectively moves to shield Lila. Her eyes are hard but her voice is gentle. “We tried to avoid it but the people who were chasing us bumped us way off course, and we already had a downed engine.”

Clint considers this explanation. “How many of you are there?”

“Us three,” the woman says, gesturing towards the raccoon and the tree. “I’m Gamora, and that’s Rocket. The tree is Groot. And there’s two more of us – a man named Peter Quill, and another member of our team. Drax.”

“Quill.” Something about the name rings a familiar bell, though he’s not sure why. “ _That_ Peter Quill?”

“The one and only, I’m assuming,” says Quill, climbing out of the smoking wreckage of his ship. His face is singed and his hair is a mess, but he somehow seems a lot like Clint – a guy who’s been through this before, who isn’t deterred by something like a ship crashing.

“Daddy, look, he wants to be my friend!” Lila crows from the ground, patting the tree on the head. The tree looks at Lila, and shrugs.

“I Am Groot.”

“Yeah, I know who _you_ are,” Clint says to the tree, before raising his eyes to survey the somewhat motley crew. “What about the rest of you?”

“Wait, seriously?” Quill looks both annoyed and amused. “We know who you are, even in the middle of freaking nowhere, because the Avengers are all over the damn news. But you don’t even know the Guardians of the _freaking_ Galaxy?”

Clint looks at each one in turn – the tree (who, he has to admit, is kind of cute, at least in the “I look cute but probably am deadly” way); the raccoon who is muttering insults under his breath; the green-skinned lady who looks exasperated (but is probably a really good fighter, Clint surmises, noting her build which reminds him of Laura); Quill, and the newcomer – the aforementioned man named Drax – who sidles up to join them, big and bulky and looking like the Hulk if the Hulk were tattooed and a little smaller and not green. He thinks long and hard, and he goes over all the reports Natasha’s made him read, and tries to think of things that aren’t baby books or baby food ingredients or nap calculations.

“Yeah, sorry. I got nothing.”

Quill looks disappointed, and Rocket groans.

“I knew it. We crash landed onto the _useless_ Avenger’s doorstep.”

“Hey!” Clint barks indignantly, drawing himself up. “What the hell?”

“I mean, why couldn’t we have crash landed at Iron Man’s place? At least he would have some cool tech I could borrow. Oh, wait, Thor’s supposed to be cool, can we use that rainbow bridge thing? Like, can we ask about that? Hey –” Rocket stops, sniffing heavily. “What’s that smell?”

“Um.” Clint looks back over his shoulder, noting the open window and the fact that Laura probably left the kitchen in a hurry when she heard the ship crash. “Dinner. I think. My wife’s making meatloaf.”

“Wait, wait – a home-cooked meal?” Rocket now looks intrigued, and Clint narrows his eyes.

“I thought I was the _useless_ Avenger.”

“Aw, I didn’t mean that,” Rocket says, waving his hand. “I insult people all the time! Ask him, I do.”

“He does, unfortunately,” Quill admits. “But, um. Dinner does sound good.”

“Daddy!” Lila’s picked up Groot and has the tree sitting on her shoulder, now. “Daddy, he said he wants to play and he wants to meet mommy!”

Clint looks at the group again, then down at his daughter, and sighs.

“Alright, come on.”

“I Am Groot.”

“I bet you are,” Clint mutters as he starts to walk back towards the house. He pushes open the door tentatively, and it suddenly feels like he’s coming home from Ultron all over again.

“Uh, honey? Everything’s fine, you can come downstairs. Also, you might want to put more plates on the table…”

 


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Laura/Natasha/Clint - Clint and Laura coaching Nat through her first (successful) pregnancy/delivery.**

“Two things.”

“What?” Laura has to lean over to make sure she hears correctly, because Natasha’s voice is soft and breathless.

“Two things. I want two things.”

“Okay,” Laura says, not letting go of her hand, which is wet and clammy. “What?”

“Coffee. And nitrous oxide.”

Laura suppresses a smile, knowing it will only piss off Natasha more in her current state. “After this, the first thing I’ll do is get you shitty hospital coffee. I promise. But I’m not going to knock you out, Nat.”

Natasha groans, sweat beading across her scalp, melting into her dark red hair. “I hate you.”

“You hate the only person who can accurately understand what it feels like to be in labor?” Laura does let her grin show this time, and leans over to kiss Natasha’s hand. “Or you hate the person who agreed you should carry the baby?”

“Both,” Natasha answers through gritted teeth as another contraction rolls through her body, forcing her to whimper in pain. Clint leans forward on the other side of the bed and puts his hand on her shoulder.

“Breathe in and out,” he instructs. “Like we showed you in the car. Like you tell me to do when I’m hurt.”

“You’re _hurt_ , you’re not pushing a child out of your body,” Natasha pants, sagging in bed as the contraction slows. Clint reaches for the cup of water on the bedside table and lets her have a small sip when she lifts her head.

“Okay?”

“No,” Natasha snaps loudly. “Get it out of me. Get it the _fuck_ out of me.”

Laura glances at Clint, and then at the door. Natasha was in the throes of labor, but she still had a ways to go before she could start actively pushing. At this rate, however, she doesn’t know if Natasha will last long enough _not_ to haul herself out of bed and throw herself out a window.

It had taken her aback, at first, how much Natasha had cried and complained after her water broke. This was the girl who had been raised by assassins and thrown to the wolves; the girl who rolled her eyes when Clint got hurt because he was the worst at handling pain and the girl who had broken her arm and merely shrugged when Laura suggested they go to a hospital and set it.

But when Natasha had broken down in the car and the tears of pain had turned into tears of fear, Laura had understood the driving force behind the anger masking the very real worry Natasha couldn’t get out of her mind: this pregnancy would go wrong, and it would be her fault.

“Belize,” Clint says after a moment, when the room has gone silent except for Natasha’s heavy breaths. “You stabbed yourself to cause a diversion and then stitched yourself up with no aesthetics while dehydrated.”

“Frankfurt,” Laura continues, catching Clint’s eye and his thoughts. “You let yourself be caught so Clint could finish the mission, even though you knew you’d undergo torture from those gang members.”

“Hong Kong,” Clint picks up. “You jumped off a roof and broke your ankle in three places and still managed to run two miles.”

Natasha bites down on her lip as another, stronger contraction seizes her body, and blood dribbles down her chin. Laura reaches for a cloth and wipes it away.

“The first time you played hide and seek with Cooper – he opened a door in your face by accident and gave you a black eye that lasted for weeks.”

“You saved Lila from falling out of a tree by throwing out your back,” Clint adds. “And you dislocated your shoulder saving her from walking across the street too fast.”

Natasha’s eyes fill with tears, but Laura notices they’re tears of emotion rather than pain.

“What if I can’t save _him_?”

She whispers the words, the fear shadowing her face. Laura moves so that she’s sitting on the bed, and kisses her wet cheek.

“You will always be there to save him. Just like you saved Clint. Just like you saved me. I promise.”

Natasha manages to smile, and turns her head to look at Clint. “You choose good wives, you know that?”

Clint laughs. “I choose the _best_ wives.”

 

Three hours later, at 5:34am, Natasha is crying again as a squirming, tiny child is placed in her arms.

Laura holds Clint, hugging him tightly, and lays her head on his shoulder watching as Natasha touches her son for the first time.

“Laurence,” Natasha says softly. Laura blinks back tears, remembering the conversation that had taken place months ago.

_“If it’s a boy and I carry it, we’re naming it Nathaniel. You can’t get out of it, Natasha. This baby is being named after you one way or the other.”  
_

_“Fine. But if it’s a boy and I carry it, we’re naming it Laurence.”  
_

_“That’s a terrible name,” Laura groans. “Why couldn’t I have a male version of my name that sounds less like a medieval knight?”  
_

_“And Nathaniel doesn’t?”_

“Laurence,” Clint repeats, behind down to touch the baby on the head. He kisses Natasha, and Laura’s heart swells with joy. “Welcome to the world, little man.”

 


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **I don't care WHO she is saying it to, but I seriously want Laura saying #48 “Now, just hold on a diddly darn minute.” Pleeeeeeeeaaase?**

“Please,” Laura begs. “Come home. This is your job.”

“No,” Clint says pointedly, and Laura can hear something that sounds like a bomb blowing up in the distance. “ _This_ is my job.”

“Clint –”

“Your job is to be an Avenger, and I’ll take care of things that come up when you’re away, and we’ll deal with it,” Clint recites calmly while more things blow up around him. “I’m just stating the facts.”

Laura groans. “Your photographic memory is a real bitch sometimes, you know that?”

“You’re not complaining when this photographic memory is making you feel really good at night,” Clint says, and Laura sighs.

“Twenty-four hours. I know you can do it.”

“Sorry, Laur.” Clint sounds entirely cheerful, for reasons she has no idea of – but then again, Clint always actually liked being out in the field; he certainly liked it a lot more than paperwork, even if he was getting shot or yelled at. “You’re on your own for this one. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“Come on –” Laura suddenly realizes she’s speaking to an empty line, and mutters a curse word under her breath as small feet slap against the kitchen floor.

“Was that daddy?”

Laura turns around, pasting a bright smile on her face. “It was.”

“Is he coming home to practice my play with me?” Lila asks excitedly. Laura shakes her head.

“Daddy’s a little busy, so he won’t be able to come home for a few days. But mommy’s going to practice with you, okay?”

Lila frowns. “Daddy always practices my plays with me. He does the best voices.”

“Well, mommy’s just going to have to do better,” Laura decides as Lila holds out a cowboy hat. She puts it on her head, trying to remind herself that, yes, she absolutely wanted to have children.

“Okay,” Lila instructs seriously, holding a book open. “Now you read the first line in the book. And do it in daddy voice.”

Laura sighs, looking down at the page, and looks up at Lila’s wide, innocent smile that stretches across her face. She suddenly can’t help but smile, too.

 

“Now, just hold on a diddly darn minute – that’s my horse you’ve got!”

 


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **OT3, holidays, they find it’s more about the lights than the carols or traditions.**

It’s different, for all of them.

Laura’s used to cozy nights. She grew up surrounded by family, where the lights were always sparkling outside the house and the laughter was always present inside the house. There were cookies and carols, and songs on the guitar, and blankets by the dying fire.

Clint’s used simple nights. There was maybe one holiday growing up that didn’t suck, and he was definitely too young to remember it. Every other holiday that had come around had been filled with booze, carols and songwriting – same things Clint always managed to find whether he was by himself, or at SHIELD, or on the street, or in jail.

Natasha’s used to rare nights. She only knew the holidays had arrived by the decorations of the city she was in, and there was never anyone she needed to worry about being home to celebrate with, because there wasn’t anyone in her life. Even after she met Clint and deflected to SHIELD, she spent her nights alone, preferring the quiet reflections to the celebrations that she American culture was so fond of.

Laura and Clint were used to comfortable nights, and later (when they had kids), loud nights. They sang carols to their children and to each other, they cooked dinner together, and chopped a tree in their backyard that they decorated to the brim.

Clint and Natasha were used to uncomfortable nights, and later (when they got closer and he realized why she was so reserved about the holidays), quiet nights. They ordered Chinese food and got each other gag gifts and Clint never made it feel like any kind of holiday, just another night together where they could feel safe with each other and fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Clint and Natasha and Laura were used to confusing nights. Natasha wanted nothing to do with tradition, and it took Laura a long time to realize it was because Natasha was scared of becoming too vulnerable. Clint got stressed about trying to make Natasha feel comfortable, worrying about how much she would fit in to their relationship and life at the farm, and ended up resenting the holiday.  Natasha got too drunk on honey whiskey one Christmas Eve and let down her guard, and they all made love until Christmas morning.

Clint and Natasha and Laura eventually learned that they don’t need carols, or traditions, or cookies or fires. They string a small collection of lights around their bedroom and across the fireplace Clint has built, they tuck their children into bed with kisses and promises of snow days and presents, and cuddle in bed together reminding themselves how lucky they are to have each other.

They fall asleep in the darkness, with the tiny collection of lights shining a blanket of warmth onto their bodies.

 


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **#40 exes meeting again after not speaking for years au - Laura/Nat**

Natasha hates being in Sicily. Sure, she doesn’t think Clint’s wrong – she’d like it a lot better if she was here for what most people come for: a vacation, a break from their normal life, an escape to a place that seems like it’s a different world altogether. If she could drink and eat and shop and sightsee like all the tourists without a care in the world or without worrying that she’s got a target on her head, Natasha thinks she’d downright like Sicily.

But she can’t do any of those things, because she has to work, and it’s not even the work part that annoys her. It’s the fact that they’ve been chasing this guy, some HYDRA goon with high-profile information, for over three days and across five cities. Natasha’s both exhausted and starving; the safehouse beds they had stayed in each night were far from comfortable even with Clint offering to take the floor to give her more room on the mattress, and, well, being a SHIELD agent didn’t offer you time to really stop and stuff your face at the most popular restaurant.

Which is why she’s pretty sure she’s hallucinating when she looks up from her vantage point where she’s supposed to be eyes on Clint’s six, and sees the familiar profile of a dark-haired woman lifting a scarf from the rack of a street vendor.

Natasha’s breath catches in her throat, because it seems too strange and too coincidental that Laura could be here – here, of all places, in another country, far away from the California life they had once tried to make for themselves after college. But no, the more she stares, the more she’s pretty damn sure that she’s not hallucinating things. That’s Laura, and she’s right here, and Natasha doesn’t know what the fuck to do about it. 

“Nat. Hey, _Nat_. What the fuck?”

Clint’s voice is sharp in her ear, and she raises her wrist to her mouth, where her comm is hidden.

“What?”

“ _What_? That guy just almost walked into your space and you didn’t even move! You could’ve been compromised! Where’s your mind right now?”

“Clint, I’m an agent undercover on a lookout, not a sniper who needs to stay under the radar,” Natasha hisses into her wrist. “That’s your job.”

“Doesn’t do us any good if our guy catches us spying on him and gets the one-up on us,” Clint grumbles, and Natasha can hear him pulling back on his bowstring. She glances up to where he’s hidden; she can barely see him on the roof of the building across the street but she knows he hasn’t moved since they took their places a few hours ago.

“I’ll be right back. Stay there. Don’t ask, or I’ll shoot you first.”

“Nat, what –”

Natasha switches off her comm before Clint can finish his sentence, and then moves out of the shadows of her hiding place. Laura’s turned her back fully towards the street and Natasha’s approach, too engrossed in looking at scarves and jewelry and some fruit. 

Natasha’s heart beats faster. She can only see Laura from the back, but she can almost feel the smoothness of Laura’s hair between her fingers, she can remember the way her curved body felt beneath the sheets, the cold band of their promise rings entwining together, cold on skin-to-skin contact. She pushes down both her emotion and nerves, and takes a deep breath.

“Well. It seems you’re a long way from home.”

Laura tenses at the voice and then turns slowly, her face the perfect picture of shock and confusion and, Natasha realizes, happiness.

_“Natasha?”_

Natasha kisses her. She doesn’t think about what a bad idea this is (it’s not that their break-up had been particularly bad, they just had moved towards different places in life, and Natasha hadn’t been able to be there for Laura as much as she had wanted to), and she knows she’ll get a talking to later (she can already hear Clint cursing up a storm, it’ll probably get back to Fury about how unprofessional she is), but right now, she doesn’t care.

 


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Wanda teaching the Barton kids about Hanukkah?**

“It’s got eight lights, Barton.”

“Huh?” Clint sticks his head out of the window, where he’s trying to screw bulbs on the plastic fake menorah that’s sitting on the window sill. Wanda is standing outside, giving him a look.

“Eight lights. Even I could have told you that,” Natasha continues in exasperation. Clint groans loudly, the sound carrying through the open window and into the winter wind.

“Can you maybe stop making fun of me and help me with the rest of these lights?” Clint grumbles before sticking his head back inside and closing the window with a slam. Wanda and Natasha exchange glances as they walk up the porch and into the house, pulling off hats and scarves.

“I’d apologize, but this is basically every holiday at the farm – Clint bitching about lights, the kids running around…who would have thought that one little plastic menorah would give him so much trouble?”

“It is nice to have a place to go,” Wanda replies, sharing a smile. “And I appreciate the effort. I know that you do not normally celebrate like this.”

“Hey, what’s that?” Cooper wanders downstairs, pointing in Clint’s direction. “That’s like those lights we’ve seen at the mall.”

“That’s a menorah,” Wanda interjects when Natasha and Clint stay silent, and Cooper makes a noise under his breath.

“We’ve never had a menorah before.”

“Well, we’ve never celebrated Hannukah before,” Laura announces from the kitchen, where she’s setting the table for dinner. 

“Han…hanu…what’s Hannucha?” Lila asks, looking up from where she’s been reading on the couch. Natasha glances at Wanda, who smiles a little bit and sits down on the floor.

“It’s a holiday that Jewish people celebrate around the same time as Christmas.”

“And you get presents, right?” Cooper asks, joining Lila on the couch. Wanda smiles again.

“Yes,” she acknowledges. “But presents aren’t why we light the menorah.” She points towards where Clint is still juggling wires and lights near the window. “A long time ago, a lot of homes for Jewish people were destroyed because there was a bad group of people who wanted to make them sad. But the Jews fought back and got their home back. They needed oil to light a candle, but they could only find enough oil to last one day. But then guess what happened?”

“Everything blew up!” Cooper says loudly and Laura clears her throat from the kitchen.

“ _Cooper_.”

“It did not blow up. The oil lasted for eight days, and it was a miracle that the Jews celebrated. So each night we honor them during Hannukah by lighting one candle a day, until there are eight candles,” Wanda finishes. Lila looks intrigued.

“If I find oil in the house will it last for eight days also and then I can say I got Hannu….Hanchathingy?” she asks hopefully. Clint lets out a loud laugh that echoes through the house, while Natasha puts a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“I’d like to see her try to say Kwanzaa,” Laura mutters as she brings a plate of cookies into the living room.

 


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Claura, cake? Please?**

 

When Laura finds her husband, he’s standing in the kitchen in front of a half eaten wedding cake, his arms braced against the countertop.

“Are you on cake watch? Because I think this thing has already been demolished enough that no one would want to steal it.”

Clint laughs quietly, but doesn’t turn around. “No. Just thinking, I guess.”

“And you need to be staring at our wedding cake to do it?”

He turns around and meets her eyes with a small smile. “I guess I don’t need to be. I got distracted.”

Laura reaches for his hand, squeezing his fingers, a chill running through her as the silver band of his new wedding ring sears her skin. “Come back to sleep.”

“In a minute. I promise.” He smiles again and Laura sighs, hearing the pretend enthusiasm in his voice. She walks in front of him and then sits down at one of the chairs at the counter.

“I’m going to guess that your mood and you getting out of bed in the middle of the night doesn’t mean you’re having second thoughts about getting married and does mean that you’re worried about taking this job.”

Clint whips around to face her. “Laura, I can’t – I just married you. I can’t leave you to run around the country with a bow and arrow.”

“You can, if that’s what you want.” Laura reaches for the wedding cake and breaks off a piece of decorative frosting with two fingers. “Clint, I love you. I’m not going to hold you back from something that you want to do. We knew about this job before we got married.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees, joining her and taking a piece of cake. “But I guess I thought once we actually did the vows and stuff, things would be…”

“Easier?” Laura raises an eyebrow. “You always were an eternal optimist.”

“Until I met you,” Clint grumbles, eating more cake. Laura grins and reaches over, smearing frosting across his nose.

“Hey!”

“We can talk about the job tomorrow,” Laura continues. “For now, I’m going to propose that if you can’t sleep, that means we get to eat wedding cake until the sun comes up. Or until we feel sick. And I’m warning you now, if you get sick, I am _not_ cleaning up your mess, regardless of those vows we just said.”

Clint smiles, leaning over the cake to kiss her gently.

“Yes, ma’am.”

 


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **15, Blissful - Laura**

The rain comes down in sheets, making it hard to see or drive. Laura presses her face against the cold window of the bus, the frigidness of the autumn cold searing into her cheeks and nose, and inhales the warm scent of cinnamon spice tea she’s been carrying in her thermos.

She didn’t know why it was here, of all places, way out in the barren cornfields of Iowa, miles from their own house. She would have preferred somewhere farther away, maybe in a different state altogether, but she trusts her gut and she’s learned not to ask questions when it comes to things like this. The bus jolts and jerks along the bumpy, slippery road, and Laura breathes in more tea, trying to think of home.

It was a bus like this that had started it all, there and back again – Laura had been reading _The Hobbit_ at the time, underlining all the pertinent passages and dialogue with blue highlighter – meeting up with Clint at various dips and curves of the Midwest, when she felt like a part of the circus itself.

It was a bus like this that had brought her across state lines and to a small Brooklyn apartment where a girl with a fiery hair and an even more fiery temper sat on the couch, looking to the world like someone who needed a home.

When the bus rolls to a stop in front of small terminal, Laura gets up and grabs the small duffel bag from under her seat. She tips the driver an extra twenty and steps down into the still heavy rain, letting it soak her hair and clothes.

“Need a shower?”

Clint is standing under the overhang of the terminal’s drop-off berth, a crooked smile lacing his face. Laura smiles back.

“Is that an umbrella in your coat, or are you just happy to see me?”

“Don’t get him started. We were wondering when you’d get here.” Natasha’s standing beside him, masked in a thick hoodie that nearly hides her face, and Laura smiles more.

“Well, you _did_ make me take the slow bus.”

“Like Ross would ever think we’d make you take the slow bus to middle of nowhere Iowa,” Clint says, rolling his eyes. “Come on. Car’s this way.”

Laura follows them to the small car that’s parked at the end of the street, shrugging off Clint’s offer of the umbrella and Natasha’s offer of her hoodie. She’s cold and she’s wet but the rain feels good, and it feels refreshing.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to get off a bus,” Laura says as she opens the door, shaking out wet hair.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to see your face,” Clint admits as he gets into the drivers seat. “Promise me you won’t ever let me leave home again?”

“Promise me that you’ll stop running off and helping people, and we have a deal,” Laura teases, catching his eye in the rearview mirror. The rain is still assaulting the earth, pouring water from the sky, and Laura knows she should feel more worried – things were different, now; Clint was a criminal on more than one level, and watching their backs never felt more important. But she watches Clint take Natasha’s hand, and leans her head against the window, and realizes she feels safer and more content than she has in years.

 


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Your baby at 5 am for the prompt!**

Laura looks at Clint with a dumbfounded stare, crossing her arms before deciding, “this can’t be normal.”

“It’s totally normal,” Clint protests. “It’s how Natasha and I decide things all the time.”

“You and Natasha are children,” Laura points out. “Also, I can’t imagine you sit in the field and play rocks, paper, scissors while bullets are flying around.”

“Well, _yeah_. Why do you think I always come home shot?” Clint asks, and Laura shoots him another glare.

“Can’t we do this the old fashioned way? As in, I pushed him out of my body, I carried him for nine months, I do a bulk of parenting when you’re at SHIELD and therefore, you get the early morning cry shift?”

“Aw, come on, Laura.” Clint grins. “I thought you married me because you liked my compromises.”

Laura’s lips quirk into a smile. “Among other things.” She sighs, eyeing the stairs. “Best of three?”

Clint grins more widely, shaking out his hands, and Laura rolls her eyes as he counts down. On three, he makes the shape of a scissors with his pointer and middle finger, while Laura’s hand comes down in a fist.

“Aw, man.”

“You always trump first with a rock, Clint. I thought you said you did this all the time.”

“I’m usually distracted by bombs,” Clint grumbles, shaking his hands out again and counting down. This time, he displays a hard fist while Laura spreads her fingers widely.

“Paper trumps rock. That’s two.”

“Come on,” Clint whines and Laura shrugs as they both display their hands a third time. Laura neatly cuts her scissors through the paper his hand is emulating.

“Your baby at 5am.” She winks at him. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should use this for decision making more often.”

 


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **five ways to say "i love you"**

**_i. (with a hoarse voice, under the blankets)_ **

It’s midnight when Clint finally gets home.

He opens the door carefully, so as not to cause any loud noises or, more precisely, hit any toddler toys that haven’t been moved from the floor (a stupid thing to be concerned about, he knows; Laura would die before she left a house cluttered at the end of the day.) Dropping his jacket on the couch, he takes off his heavy boots and grabs a bottle of water from the kitchen pantry, downing half of it before heading upstairs.

Everyone’s asleep, and Clint expects as much. When he’d called from the road earlier, Lila had been hopped up on so much sugar that she could barely sit still and Cooper was coming off an all-day field trip to the zoo that had more or less zapped his energy. Sure enough, a perfunctory peek into the room his two children share reveals Lila and Cooper sleeping soundly with light snores, Lila’s foot sticking out from underneath her Disney Princess covers.

He goes to the bathroom and brushes his teeth, then shuts off the hall light before heading to bed. As he kicks off his pants and carelessly tosses his shirt over his head (and into the laundry basket, _thank you Laura, I do have good aim_ ), he notices a sound coming from underneath the blankets.

Clint pauses, then walks towards the bed and pulls down the covers. Instantly, Laura pulls them back over her head and as she does so, Clint realizes there’s another person in bed next to her. Laura’s eyes squint into two small slits, and Natasha moans from the other side.

“Beat you.”

Clint smiles, and pulls the covers over his head. He knows his voice is pretty much gone from traveling and jetlag, but he doesn’t care.

“I love you, too.”

 

_**ii. over a beer bottle** _

“Natasha, relax.”

“Fuck you.” Natasha looks up from the table, and slides the nail she’s been biting out of her mouth. Her leg continues to move, though, a nervous jitter that shakes her whole body, and Clint puts his hand on her arm.

“Relax.”

“I can’t!” she snaps, and several other people at the bar turn their head at her voice. Clint shoots them an apologetic smile, before turning back and shoving a bottle of beer in her face.

“You wanna get up and shoot a few people?”

That at least gets her to smile, and she takes the beer, downing half of it in one gulp. Clint can’t figure out if he’s annoyed or impressed given it’s her fifth drink since they got here; he goes with impressed because he doesn’t feel like getting into an argument tonight.

“Actually, yeah. How much trouble do you think we’ll get in if we shoot innocent civilians? I’ll keep it clean, I promise. No head shots.”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “Honestly, I think that as nervous as you are about your little declaration, that might be the one thing that sends her running.”

Natasha glares, but doesn’t say anything else, because Laura chooses that moment to walk in the door. She immediately spots the booth where Clint and Natasha are holding court and walks forward with a big smile, dropping down next to Natasha.

“Thank _god_ you asked me for drinks tonight,” she says with a long sigh. “Cooper wouldn’t shut up about this television show he’s watching – he threw a fit when I told him he couldn’t watch anymore, he’s been cranky all day for no reason, and I swear to god I’m going to give him to the mailman if that keeps up, and the dryer broke for the tenth time after I got up –”

“I love you,” Natasha blurts out suddenly, not looking at anything except the bottle in front of her. Silence falls around the table, and for a long moment, there’s only the sound of the jukebox and laughter from other couples and the scraping of chairs.

“Oh, Natasha.” Laura sounds like she’s going to cry, and she leans over to kiss her as Natasha looks up in surprise. “I love you too.”

 

**_iii. loud, so everyone can hear_ **

In retrospect, it was a really bad idea.

“It was a really bad idea,” Laura admits as she watches Clint stumble out of the car. “You said they signed off on it.”

“They did,” Natasha says with a sigh. “I tried to talk them out of it. But there’s only so much they could agree to handwave when he was in that much pain.”

“And SHIELD didn’t know he was going to end up with a combination of drugs that made him _this_ loopy?”

“Unfortunately – maybe fortunately, actually – they didn’t. But I did, after I looked at what they prescribed.” Natasha lets Clint walk unsteadily towards the house. “At least I know he can sleep it off. It just might take awhile. And hey, look on the bright side. He’s not complaining about pain.”

“Great,” Laura mutters as Clint finally focuses on them. He waves wildly. 

“Laura! Nat!” Clint’s voice carries over the trees and the wind as he shouts, happy and carefree. “You’re my _favorite_ wives!”

Laura’s eyebrows shoot up and Natasha stares at him, not knowing whether she should laugh or not.

“I _said_ –”

“I know what you said,” Laura replies, and this time, Natasha does laugh out loud as Laura walks forward to help him towards the house. “We love you, too.”

 

**_iv. slowly, the words dripping from your tongue like honey_ **

It starts slow, like it always does: Laura’s tongue on her lips, Clint’s hands on her stomach, nimble bow fingers stretching their way down south. The first time they all slept together, she had been afraid – as much as Natasha Romanoff could admit she was _afraid_ – because she was worried it would be too awkward. She was worried she wouldn’t fit into this place she had made for herself, believed for herself, if she truly let herself become intimate. 

But there had been no awkwardness. Laura’s touch had been gentle and kind, the same way her words and kisses had been since the first day they met. Clint’s touch had been reassuring and firm, the same way his presence had been for most of her life. It had been slow, and Natasha wasn’t used to slow. She was used to fast and rapid, she was used to getting chewed up and spit out and doing the same to other people.

And now – now – Laura’s teeth close around her ear, her mint-infused breath warm and filling Natasha’s senses. She thinks she says something. Maybe she does. It’s words and meanings that are meant for Natasha, for Clint, for only those enclosed in the walls of a farmhouse where they’ve all found a home. 

The thing is, no matter who was saying _I love you_ in this situation, they never needed words for it.

 

**_v. in awe, the first time you realised it_ **

Natasha doesn’t take the feeling of love lightly. Love was for children, but perhaps more importantly, love was something that was a luxury. Love wasn’t even something you _earned_. Love was dangerous and not something Natasha ever thought she could be worthy of.

Clint doesn’t take the feeling of love lightly. Love was for children who grew up with attentive parents and a good childhood, not people like him, a kid who was only paid attention to when there wasn’t a bottle around. Love was something that you could take away just as easily as you could decide to give it, and not something Clint thought he would ever have with someone that didn’t intend to fuck him over.

Laura doesn’t take the feeling of love lightly. Love was for the heroes she read in storybooks, the fantasies of princesses who waited to be rescued by knights in shining armor. Love was for people who felt they could settle down, who believed they could find that one person that was meant to complete them. Laura never imagined she would love two people so equally, and she never thought it would even matter.

It doesn’t happen at once. It’s gradual, for each of them, a moment or an hour when their face changes and their voice changes and they look at each other and say, _I love you_.

When each of them realize it, they consider it the best day of their lives.

 


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Person A and B are a couple with a mutual friend C. C gets really sick/injured and A+B take care of them. They all get crushes on each other through all the cuddling and nurturing that was needed. A+B open their relationship, if C is willing.**

The first time that Clint has to explain Natasha to someone in his personal life that’s not Laura, it’s while she’s coughing up blood and clutching a dislocated shoulder on the lawn of their farm.

“My co-worker,” Clint says somewhat apologetically as he helps her inside, while Laura’s coffee date gapes and almost drops her latte.

“She’s _bleeding_!”

“It happens,” Laura says warily as they limp slowly away. She turns around and smiles brightly at her friend. “Job hazards. Same time next week?”

 

 

The thing is, Clint’s pretty sure he’s had a crush on Natasha ever since he walked in on her sharpening her knives while humming “New York State of Mind” under her breath.

The thing is, Clint’s married, and has been married for years, and he’s got one kid at this point and he’s pretty damn sure he’s not supposed to be pining after his partner when he’s happily married. 

The thing is, his plan of trying to be a thoughtful, platonic “I care for you until death because that’s what partners do and anyway, you owe me your life and I owe you ten of my lives” partner and best friend goes out the window when Laura decides that Natasha needs to be more than just a work friend since she’s going to be so involved in their lives. 

(“I can’t have my child wondering why a strange woman is walking into their house every other week,” she had said in exasperation.)

The thing is, they were just starting to figure out how to co-exist as a comfortable threesome when Natasha had to go and get herself shot.

 

 

The farm is not a hospital. Laura’s maintained dozens of times over that the farm is her home and it is _not a hospital_. But she rushes into the house behind Clint and helps him lower Natasha to the kitchen floor.

“You need an ambulance for that gunshot wound,” Laura says. Natasha coughs again.

“Bullet went clean through,” she says weakly. “Just need him to stitch. Set my shoulder and be done with it.”

“Natasha, you’re – you were  _shot_ ,” Laura says worriedly, feeling her face pale. Clint’s moving at lightning speed around their kitchen, gathering towels and a rather sophisticated first aid kit from under the sink.

“Set. My. Goddamn. Shoulder.”

Laura looks at Clint, who shrugs in a response of  _yeah, I know, this is normal, trust me…no, don’t you dare ask me if this is what I do too, you don’t want to know._

“Alright,” she says shakily, getting down on the ground and putting her hands on Natasha’s body. She’s never set a shoulder before but with a kid who threw himself off trees more often than not, she’s learned a thing or two about how to take care of dislocated bones.

She’s glad that Natasha passes out, because when Clint’s too busy stitching up her gunshot wound, she kisses Natasha on the forehead and no one bothers to notice.

 

 

“I’m fine.”

“You are _not_ fine.”

“Clint, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Laura cuts in four days later, when Natasha is actually awake enough to be coherent. Clint and Natasha are lying on the bed together and Laura is sitting across from them in a big plush chair, knitting a baby blanket for newly born Lila, who is sleeping in her bassinet in the corner.

“I’m fine,” Natasha grumbles, but Laura notices she stops complaining when Clint strokes her hair tenderly, letting her pass out in the safety of his arms.

 

 

One week after Natasha’s injury, Laura walks in on Clint making grilled cheese sandwiches in the kitchen.

“You’re making grilled cheese,” Laura observes, folding her arms. 

“Yeah.” Clint looks up from the stove, flipping a piece of bread that’s turned golden brown. “Nat said she’s finally up for eating real food again, so I thought we’d start simple.”

“You made me grilled cheese on our first date,” Laura points out with a small smile. “Because you wanted to make something simple and not overwhelm me.”

“Oh.” Clint is suddenly very busy with getting a plate out of the cupboard, avoiding Laura’s eyes. “You’re right. I did.”

 

 

“Have you ever been with anyone other than Clint?” Natasha asks when Laura brings her breakfast in bed, along with medication. Laura looks at her curiously, and then nods, sinking down onto the mattress.

“Yes. In high school, and then before we met in college.”

“No,” Natasha says, still sounding tired. She turns to Laura, grimacing with pain. “I mean, with another woman.”

“No,” Laura says a little too quickly. “No…no, why?”

Natasha closes her eyes, but Laura swears she can see a small smile gracing her lips.

“Just curious.”

 

 

Clint is reading on the porch with the windows open when he hears a loud thud from inside. He rushes in the door, tossing his book to the ground, and finds Laura doing the same thing, her hands still wet from washing the dishes. Another loud thud vibrates through the house as he runs up the stairs, Laura on his heels, and he finds Natasha bent over the bathroom sink, gasping in pain. Scattered around her are bottles of lotion and mouthwash and a few toothpaste bottles, which have been knocked off the counter.

“ _What on earth are you doing?_ ” Clint snaps more angrily than he means to, rushing to help her sit down on the toilet seat. Natasha’s chest heaves as she tries to catch her breath.

“Taking out my stitches.”

“Taking – this isn’t goddamn SHIELD, Natasha! You have me and Laura right here, why didn’t you ask us for help?”

“Natasha –”

“Maybe I don’t want your help!” Natasha refutes, glaring at both of them and cutting Laura off. Clint glares back, the frustration and worry of Natasha’s injury finally beginning to take its toll.

“Fine.” He turns to leave, stomping out of the bathroom, and is almost at the stairs when he hears a small, pitiful voice calling behind him.

“Wait.”

Clint sighs, and turns back. Laura’s already at the door, having moved a lot slower than her husband.

“Please stay.”

Clint looks at her for a moment, taking in her scared eyes and her shaking body and nods, sitting down on the ground.

“I’ll stay. We’ll take out your stitches together, okay?”

Natasha nods and Laura quietly starts to back out of the room as Clint touches her gently.

“Both of you.”

Laura looks surprised but walks back towards Natasha, bending down and putting a hand against her cheek. 

“Always.”

 

 

Three weeks after Natasha’s injury, Laura’s making breakfast and Clint’s making coffee when she notices Natasha walking down the stairs with a duffel bag.

“What are you doing?” Laura asks in confusion, because Clint’s not scheduled to go back to work for another week.

“Well.” Natasha walks slowly into the kitchen, taking care to keep weight off her still healing wound. “I can’t stay here forever. I’ll start to get too used to owls. Besides, you have a baby to take care of.”

“So you’re just going back to work?” Clint asks, putting down his coffee and crossing his arms. “Who’s going to take care of you?”

“I don’t _need_ anyone to take care of me,” Natasha responds hotly. “I survived just fine before you picked me up in Russia, thank you very much. I’ll survive leaving the farm with an injury.”

“No,” Laura says firmly, something breaking inside her chest, squeezing her insides into small pieces. She’s not sure what this thing with Natasha is – she doesn’t know what it feels like to love another woman – but she does know what it feels like to love.

“No?” Natasha looks amused.

“No,” Laura repeats, taking Clint’s hand. She looks at him and he nods back, reading her eyes and her mind with a small smile. “ _You_ are staying right here. At least, until we decide to let you go.”

Natasha looks around the farm, and then back at Clint and Laura, and walks forward as Clint opens his arms.

“Yes, ma’am.” 

 


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Okay but sex-tea-and-rock-n-roll and I are now on a freaking roll talking about how to put Bobbi in the ClintNatLaura Barton fam 'verse and if you think Bobbi, Clint's on-again/off-again external girlfriend thing, doesn't show up six months into Clint's retirement in daisy dukes and a plaid shirt to see what all this fuss is about then you are wrong.**

If Bobbi Morse had a camera with her, she thinks she absolutely would have snapped a photo of Clint Barton’s shocked face when he opened the door one Sunday morning in June.

“I –”

See, the thing is, Bobbi’s seen Clint Barton at a loss for words before. She’s seen him lose his speech over things like food and sex and injuries and clothes and nights in safehouses with no clothes. And yet, she thinks she’s never seen her ex-boyfriend look more uncomfortable and surprised than he does in this moment.

“Yes?”

“Why the hell are you here?” Clint finally bursts out, eyeing her up and down and Bobbi mentally pats herself on the back. The daisy dukes were a last minute decision, because what the hell do you wear when you visit someone who lives on an honest-to-god real  _farm_?

“Um.” Bobbi sidesteps him easily, glancing up at his face. “Because you’re retired, and because I wanted to see _why_ you were retired, and good god, Clint, when was the last time you shaved?”

“It’s romantic! Laura says I look like Vincent Van Gogh!”

“Right,” Bobbi says dryly as she trips over a set of plastic rings and then stubs her toe on a large red firetruck. The toy starts to wail loudly, and Clint runs forward, falling to the ground and fumbling with the switch.

“Jesus, can you stop? You’re going to wake him!”

Bobbi raises an eyebrow. “How many kids now?”

“Three,” Clint says shortly. “How many kids now?”

“None,” Bobbi says smugly. “Although, maybe there’s one on the side…oh, stop it,” she adds off of Clint’s pale face. “You know that Hunter would never let me go that far. How many wives now?”

“Just –” He stops at what Bobbi knows is a sly smile. “Still two.”

“Oh, good.” Bobbi flicks hair over her shoulder. “I really thought for a moment that with this whole retirement thing, you sent Natasha back to work or something and it was just you and Laura.” She pauses. “How’s the sex?”

“Good. I mean. Really, really good.” Clint looks a little embarrassed but Bobbi notices his eyes are excitable, almost as if he’s been dying to share this answer with someone who gets it besides the two adults that live with him. “I don’t know why we never tried the threesome thing with Natasha.”

“Because you could barely wrap your mind around one woman at the time, let alone two,” Bobbi reminds him. “I guess you grew up.”

“You haven’t been in bed with Laura. It’s an entirely different experience than you and Natasha.”

“You wanna test that theory? I know where you keep your sex toys. Well, I can guess. Bottom drawer, two layers of shirts?”

“I have a farm to run!”

“Uh huh.” Bobbi turns in place, taking in the overstocked shelves and photos on the walls and the rumpled couch cushions. “Is Laura home?”

“She’s with the kids. It’s summer camp day.”

“Domestic.” Bobbi grins. “Natasha?”

“Grocery shopping.” Clint looks pained. “Come on, don’t say it.”

“What? That you’re totally, one hundred percent house-broken? Clint Barton, everyone’s favorite family friendly father, also known as the former SHIELD marksmen who once got so distracted by my chest that he almost shot his handler instead of his target.”

“That was one time!”

He looks so indignant and annoyed that Bobbi can’t help but smile watching a lock of sandy hair flap across his forehead, where it hides a fresh scar. 

“Retirement suits you,” she says after a moment of studying him. “You look good.”

“So do you,” Clint answers, shoving his hands in his pocket. “Can’t really say that about all my exes, can I?”

“Probably not,” Bobbi agrees, inclining her head towards the kitchen. “So, are you going to stand there all day? Or am I actually going to see this place you’ve been calling home for the past few years?”

 


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **‘We’re actually being kind of silly for once’ kiss**

It should be worse, Laura thinks. Key word: _should_.

But really, it’s far from Laura’s first rodeo with this kind of thing – the “Clint gets himself locked up/maimed up/knocked around/concussed/broken” speech that’s usually accompanied by a grimace from Natasha on the other side of the door. Sometimes, there’s blood dripping from her mouth when she relays the message. Sometimes, there’s pure rage. Sometimes, there’s an eye roll and exhaustion. Sometimes, there’s a pale face and an arm that’s bent at an angle that’s decidedly not normal.

The Natasha that shows up this time – the one that tells her Clint is locked up in some maximum security prison usually reserved for the latest and greatest in worst superhero criminals – isn’t harboring any of the usual expressions or injuries. Her dark auburn hair is shoved into a messy bun, her face is set in a grim look indicative of resignation, and she walks past Laura with barely a hello or a glance around the house she hasn’t set foot in for weeks.

“I need a drink.”

“Sure,” Laura says, following her into the kitchen. “Whiskey? Gin? Something harder?”

Natasha answers her own question, walking to the liquor cabinet and taking out a bottle of whiskey. She downs a mouthful, suppressing a cough and then holds it out.

“Nat, I just had a kid. My tolerance is worth shit right now.”

Natasha grins. “Trust me. I know.”

Yes, of course she knows. Laura gives up and takes the bottle, drinking from the neck, and then hands it back. It goes on like that for awhile, silence and understanding and just quiet resignation between the two women who love one of the most competent and yet also one of the most fucked up superheroes the world has ever seen, until Natasha slams the bottle down on the table and walks forward forcefully, bringing Laura in for a deep kiss.

Her arms wrap around Laura’s neck and Laura allows herself to be pulled into Natasha’s embrace, because she always forgets until she kisses Natasha how _much_ she likes kissing Natasha. It was danger and mystery and exhilaration and promise and love and the darkest edges of the world settling on her skin, a feeling she could never find a way to explain.

When Natasha breaks away, Laura’s lips feel numb, and the air feels like it’s been pushed from her lungs. Natasha leans forward again, swirling her tongue over Laura’s upper lip.

“I know we should be worried about him –”

“Cap’s gonna break him out, I’m not worried about him –”

“I know,” Laura breathes, grinning as Natasha leans forward again. “But when he gets out of that prison, he’s going to be _so_ pissed that he missed this.”

 


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Claurasha who has the addiction to the Tsum Tsum phone game and then later the plush dolls?**

It starts innocently, like it always does, Clint fishing out his phone as Natasha pilots the quinjet back to base because he’s bored and he needs to recharge his mind. Natasha doesn’t pay much attention at first, because she’s used to rolling her eyes at the cracked out laugh and snorts that come from watching dumb YouTube videos of dogs falling down or the “newscasts gone wrong” but when he’s silent for more than five minutes, she can’t help her curiosity.

 “What the hell are you doing over there?”

Clint looks up as if he’s been reprimanded and fumbles with the phone, dropping it at his feet. “Just playing a game,” he says smoothly and Natasha raises an eyebrow at the reaction.

“What kind of game?”

Clint leans over to pick up the phone and goes back to studying it. “Just something Lila showed me. It’s fun.”

Natasha lets the whole thing go because at least it’s keeping him occupied, and doesn’t press him as he goes back to concentrating too deeply on his phone, swiping his fingers meticulously against the screen. She forgets about the incident until they’re in a briefing four days later and she realizes Clint isn’t paying attention, instead fiddling with his phone under the table.

Which is nothing new, really. Clint paying attention at briefings was as about as surprising as him saying he needed more than four cups of coffee to function. But he’s more distracted than usual and Natasha has to kick him more than usual in order to make sure they both don’t get chewed out by Hill.

“What the _hell_ are you doing with that phone?” Natasha asks irritably after they leave, and Clint starts walking faster down the hall.

“Just playing a game,” he answers and Natasha speeds up behind him, swiping the phone out of his hand with all the practiced skills of a spy.

“Hey!”

Natasha looks down at the screen and furrows her brow. “What’s this?”

“It’s…” Clint looks positively embarrassed, which Natasha thinks is a feat it of itself considering how many situations they’ve found themselves in over the years (including but not limited to strip club dancing). “You know those tsum tsum dolls that Lila’s been collecting?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, because she’s bought Clint’s daughter more than her fair share. 

“Well, she showed me a game when I was home last week. And I’ve been playing, and look – you can collect different characters and everything!”

Natasha watches as Clint eagerly grabs the phone back, swiping over the different characters and showing her how to build puzzles and collect characters. She carefully turns on her heel, walks away and calls Laura.

“Did you know your husband is obsessed with a child’s mobile game?”

 

 

It starts innocently, like it always does, Natasha wandering off by herself because she’s bored and they’re back in Iowa with no work to worry about and she sometimes likes to shop around by herself without worrying if her idiot partner is going to find something to annoy her with or try to buy her the latest ugly piece of jewelry.

They split up once they get to the mall, Clint and Laura taking Lila to the LEGO store and Natasha electing to grab a coffee and browse at Macy’s, and she’s halfway down the hallway, passing cupious amounts of clothing stores, when she somehow finds herself in front of the Disney Store. 

The tsum tsums in the window are the first thing she notices, because she’s been buying them for Lila, and because of Clint’s stupid game, and because they’ve taken over the house in some way. (Natasha found one in her shoe the other day but couldn’t get mad, because she knew it was Lila’s favorite game to hide toys in Aunt Nat’s mission bags.) Before she can stop herself, she’s marching inside because why not, and because she owed Lila a gift from this visit anyway.

She picks out a Princess Jasmine tsum tsum and then stands in front of the rack, staring at the rest of the variety of plushes, which all stare back at her with their small smushed faces from where they’re stacked on top of one another.

And dammit, Natasha’s never been sentimental, but she has to admit they are kind of cute.

It’s the excuse she gives herself as she goes to the register with an armful of small plushes, and after she’s paid, she tucks the bag neatly into her purse before meeting up with Clint and Laura at the food court.

“What’s that?” Clint asks and Natasha looks down to see the tell-tale design of the Disney Store bag peeking out from her bag. 

“Nothing,” Natasha replies smoothly. “Maybe I got a present for someone.”

Lila’s eyes light up in delight, and Clint drops the conversation, which Natasha is thankful for. When they get home, Natasha sneaks upstairs and locks the door and opens the bag, carefully laying out the array of plushes before her, before setting aside the one for Lila.

“I knew it!” Clint exclaims triumphantly as the door opens behind her suddenly, Clint having picked the lock and Natasha whirls around in surprise.

“Clint, I swear to god –”

“Hey, Laura!” Clint’s voice is positively joyful as he yells out of the room. “Did you know Nat is obsessed with a child’s toy?”

 

 

It starts innocently, like it always does, Laura taking Clint’s phone because she’s tired and because running around after kids is exhausting and sometimes she needs a break. Clint’s been playing that tsum tsum game that Lila’s become enthralled with, and because of that, the app is already open – at least, that’s the reason she gives to herself as she settles in to play.

She becomes engrossed in the game, losing herself in building puzzles and collecting cute innocent creatures, so much so that she doesn’t even hear the door open behind her or Clint’s jubilant “HA!” that jolts her out of her concentration. When she looks up, even Natasha’s grinning at her, like she’s trying to stop herself from saying something she’ll later regret.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she says finally, throwing them both a look before going back to the game. “I birthed these children. I get to play their games.”

 


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Clint/Laura/Nat + collage roommate au**

The day Laura met her suitemate, everything went wrong. She was late for class thanks to having overslept, she wasn’t wearing any make-up, and to make matters worse, she practically rammed into his chest by accident when she was trying to get out of the room, spilling coffee all over herself.

“Woah,” said a disheveled, cocky-grinning Clint Barton. He eyed her up and down and then handed her a towel he happened to be holding. “Someone is _really_ excited for the first day of classes.”

Laura had been too mortified to actually continue the conversation, so she mumbled a good-bye and jetted out of the room, trying to busy herself with school and new friends and homework. When she got back to her room, her roommate was sitting on her bed, casually twirling a white plastic knife between her fingers.

“Natasha Romanoff,” she said, holding out a free hand and tilting a flame-tipped head of hair. “You’re Laura, right? You’re cute.”

When Natasha met Clint, it was a different situation altogether: Laura and Natasha were getting ready to go to a club, even though Laura didn’t care for clubs, but Natasha had noticed Laura was too stressed to sit in her room all weekend.

“Woah,” said Clint when he peeked his head out and saw both of them standing outside his door, because Natasha had wanted to stop and ask if she could borrow his cell phone charger. “Who are _you_?”

“This is my roommate Natasha,” Laura explained when Natasha didn’t answer right away. “And this is what I look like when I’m not wearing spilled coffee, by the way.”

Laura learned eventually that Natasha didn’t really swing one way or the other; she had kissed both guys and girls, although it took Laura awhile to figure out when Natasha was flirting with her and when she was just being sarcastic and sweet. Clint started knocking on their door more and more, and one night, he asked Laura to get coffee with him. Laura didn’t think of it as a date, because they all hung out so often, but at the end of the night, he kissed her, and not chastely.

“Clint kissed me,” Laura said, her voice bordering on dream-like when she walked back into the room, having closed the door safely behind her. Natasha looked up from where she was doodling in her notebook, brushing away a curl of red.

“He kissed me last week after class. I was waiting for you to catch up.”

Laura doesn’t get mad at Natasha for kissing Clint, or at Clint for kissing Natasha. Instead, she looks at Natasha and asks, “was he better than me?”

Natasha smiled at Laura and patted the mattress gently. “Let’s find out.”

One day a few months later, they all stumble back to their room after having way too much to drink at a house party. Natasha’s impatient, and by the time they open the door, she’s already trying to get Clint’s pants off. Laura’s not doing much better, she’s pretty much trying to get Natasha’s shirt off. Clint’s just _impatient_ , because he’s had an erection since they started touching him and he _really_ needs someone to get him off already.

Laura pushes open the door and the three of them fall onto the floor of the small suite hallway, and that’s where they decide, _fuck it._ Laura rips off Natasha’s clothes and Natasha pushes down Clint’s pants and Laura starts kissing them, interrupted by a surprised squeak from somewhere above them. Laura looks up to find Clint’s roommate staring down at the floor with wide eyes.

“What?” She raises her head, wiping her mouth and smearing Natasha’s lipstick, which has left a mark. “You’ve never seen a three way before?”

Natasha laughs and gets up, scrambling to open the door to their room, and they take their action to Natasha’s bed.

The next morning, they all say _I love you_ for the very first time, and they mean it.

 


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Nathaniels first words, please.**

He stands in the foyer, fiddling with the buckle on his uniform.

“Clint. Stop.”

He looks up, meeting Laura’s eyes. “What if I miss it?”

“You’re not going to miss it,” Laura says placidly, putting a free hand on his shoulder. Clint shakes his head, staring at the child in her arms, the one that’s grinning at him from under a mess of light blonde hair.

“It’s not like they give you a date and time for these things. It could be tomorrow. It could right after I walk out the door…”

“It could be in three days,” Natasha says, walking into the hallway, her hands covered with finger paint. “Which is the amount of time you’re going to be away. Three days.”

“I know.” Clint scuffs his foot against the ground. “I just thought it would get easier. Or that I’d stop going out at some point. Or…”

“You’re going to do your job until you decide you absolutely want to stop,” Laura breaks in, kissing him. She gives him a look and he leans over, kissing Nathaniel on the head.

“Hey, be good, okay? Don’t talk before I get back. Not even to Natasha. I know you’re kind of supposed to be named for her, but I’m your dad, remember?”

Natasha rolls her eyes and Laura sighs as Nathaniel opens his arms with a small gurgle.

“Go,” Natasha says, gesturing with messy hands. “Or I’ll be forced to finger paint your costume and you’ll have to explain to everyone why you have a pink vest.”

“He does look good in pink,” Laura muses with a smirk and Clint mock pouts, before picking up his bow and walking out the door.

 

 

Clint comes back near midnight on the third day, opening the door and walking inside with a little bit of uncertainty.

“Don’t worry,” Laura says as she walks down the stairs, and Clint’s not surprised she’s awake – Laura barely sleeps anymore when he’s away. “I would’ve called you.”

He lets out a breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding. “I know.” He follows her back upstairs, and starts undressing as Laura gets back into bed, watching intently as he removes his clothing.

“Do I need to check you?”

“Nope.” He holds up his hands. “A few bruises, but no broken bones, and no internal bleeding. I swear.”

Laura gives him a wary look but nods, pulling the covers back down as he crawls into bed, settling against her.

“You know what I was thinking, while I was away?” Clint asks after a moment, when they’re both finally comfortable.

“How you need to really shave?”

“No.” Clint makes a face. “How it was never me. It was ‘cup’ and it was ‘mom’, but it was never me.”

“If you’re trying to tell me that means your children love you any less, I’ll kill you,” Laura says matter-of-factly. “You’re their father, Clint.”

“And sometimes I’m not even around,” he argues a little morosely. Laura sighs, reaching up to stroke his hair.

“Your children love you. And they know you love them.” She pauses. “And if you ever refute that because of something like they didn’t say your name as their first word, I’ll get Natasha to shoot you. Again.”

“She didn’t even mean it the first time,” Clint protests as he closes his eyes.

(It takes another two weeks, but Nathaniel finally says his first word.)

(His first word is “dad.”)

 


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **All barton kids and First Tooth please?**

Cooper is first, and Laura and Clint think they’re prepared, but they’re not.

He’s in the bathroom brushing his teeth when he starts to scream, and Laura and Clint practically trip over each other as they attempt to make their way to him, expecting the worst. When they get there, they soon notice there’s nothing _wrong_ with Cooper, save for a large amount of blood on his mouth and a small tooth on the counter.

“It fell! Like dad!”

Laura bites down on a laugh as Clint quietly grumbles under his breath, and Laura helps Cooper clean out his mouth, watching as he runs his tongue over the newly created gap in his top gum line.

“Cool! I can scare people!”

“That’s your child,” Laura mutters once they’ve gotten him calmed down and into bed. “That is most _definitely_  your child.”

Clint grins, watches Cooper sleep, and tucks a dollar bill under the pillow.

 

 

Lila is curious, has always been curious; Laura routinely jokes that Lila came out of the womb with book and a question rather than a scream and a cry. She spends the beginnings of her life looking at everything with inquisitive eyes that ask questions she doesn’t yet have words for, and then once she can talk, she asks all the questions that have been stored inside her brain, and steals her brother’s books and hides out in the pantry to read without being disturbed.

“Lila’s asking for you,” Laura says one day, when she finds Natasha helping with lunch in the kitchen. “She wouldn’t tell me why.”

Natasha finishes cutting up bread and cheese and then makes her way upstairs, finding Lila sitting in her room against her bed.

“Auntie Nat.” Lila turns solemnly, offering out a small tooth. “What do I do with this?”

Natasha finds herself smiling and sits down, pulling the little girl into her lap, and she explains how sometimes the human body changes and grows, and because of that, sometimes things in your body change and grow, too.

“Like you?” Lila asks, examining her mouth in a small plastic mirror. 

“Yes,” Natasha says as she hugs the little girl, who doesn’t know how ironic her words are. Later, she’ll sneak into her room and tuck a dollar under her pillow. “Like me.”

 

 

Nathaniel Pietro is named for the two people that saved Clint’s life, and after he’s born, the sister that lost half of herself comes to the farm to regroup. She doesn’t mean to stay, but she does, and suddenly it’s not just Natasha coming back to the farm with Clint, it’s Wanda, too – Wanda who goes shopping with Natasha, who helps Laura make dinner, who learns how to re-floor a room with Clint. Wanda, who babysits Cooper and Lila, who reads more than she ever did as a child, who cleans up messes and sees a baby grow into a person.

The Avengers come and go, work comes and goes, but Nathaniel grows and Natasha stays and Wanda stays.

“He reminds me of Pietro,” she tells Clint one day while they’re sanding down wood. “He talks a lot.”

Clint laughs. “He’s giving his siblings a run for their money,” he says. “Talked my ear off the other day about school.”

When Nathaniel loses his first tooth, Wanda is the one sneaking into his room, placing money under his pillow. She brushes back his hair, and kisses him gently, and thinks about how this time, she’ll get to protect him.

 


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Nat/Laura first kiss**

Laura Barton is five foot five inches of a soft demeanor covered up by a hard exterior, long brown hair tumbling down her back, an easy gait as she moves through the house picking up toys and making food and cleaning up kids with ketchup on their faces.

Laura Barton is not at all what Natasha expects, and so naturally, she falls in love.

(Clint laughs when she tells him, after sex in Jakarta, which doesn’t surprise Natasha at all. Clint laughs at almost anything when he’s not sure how to respond.

“You think my wife’s hot, huh?”

No, Natasha doesn’t think Laura is hot, because Natasha doesn’t think of Laura in terms of a school girl crush. Natasha thinks Laura is attractive, and interesting and different and strong, and unlike any girl that Natasha’s met. Plus, she’s married to a man that Natasha wants to both kiss and kill on a daily basis.)

The first time Natasha kisses Laura, it’s in the middle of summer, and Clint’s brought her home after a bullet to the shoulder that’s laid her up for longer than she’s wanted to admit. 

“Fresh air and kids screaming will do you good,” he tells her when they arrive. Natasha watches Laura set the table later for dinner, and finds herself thinking that watching Laura walk around in the short, cute dresses – the ones she knows she owns from looking in her closet – will do her good, too.

“You know, I’ve never really met Clint’s partners before,” Laura admits mildly, when they’re sitting outside with spiked lemonade, watching Clint run around on the wide lawn with his son. “Usually, he can’t keep them around long enough to bring them home – or he doesn’t want to.”

Natasha looks down at her lap, taking a slow drink. “I don’t know why he brought me home,” she says. _I don’t know why he brought me home the first or second or third time, or why he continued to_. Laura’s eyes turn curious.

“He said you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

Natasha laughs, long and loud, shoving a hand across her mouth. Laura, for her part, looks surprised.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “It’s just…no one has ever said that about me before. I find it hard to believe someone would.”

“It’s not just him,” Laura says after a pause, and when Natasha looks up, she finds herself floored by how much she can read in Laura’s face. There’s a vulnerability bleeding through the facade she always carries, but there’s also a little bit of shyness, a look Natasha recognizes because it’s the same expression she knows she wears when she watches Laura read to her children, or when she watches her do her hair in the bathroom, singing quiet showtunes to herself when she thinks no one is listening.

Natasha leans over and kisses Laura chastely at first, and when Laura doesn’t pull away, she kisses a little more intensely, allowing the feeling in her stomach to swim up her chest and settle into her brain. Laura breathes out gently as their lips part, her eyes darting quickly to the lawn where Clint and Cooper are engaged in a concentrated game of tag.

Natasha runs her tongue over her lips, which she realizes have become dry. “When you said you’ve never really met Clint’s partner’s before…”

“Trust me,” Laura says, her eyes shining. She reaches over and takes Natasha’s hand. “I’ve never _really_ met Clint’s partners before.”

 


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Thanksgiving with the OT3**

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura, right after they get married; there’s a store-bought turkey and the apartment is too small but Laura insists on putting little paper decorations out to make it feel more like home and Clint doesn’t care because it’s the first time he’s been truly thankful for anything in his life.

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura, right after they move to the farm; at first everything seems lonely and empty and too big with just the two of them and a large table and too much food but then Laura turns around while basting the turkey and casually announces she’s pregnant and laughs when Clint drops the carton of eggs on the floor in shock before he gets emotional.

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura and Cooper when Cooper is just old enough to sit at the table by himself; legs swinging from the chair because they don’t quite touch the floor while Clint makes sure the food actually _stays_ on the plate and Laura teases him about how their son has picked up his eating habits.

(Thanksgiving with Clint and Natasha because Clint gets sent overseas at the absolute worst time, so he calls Laura and video chats with her, and then him and Natasha sit in a deserted restaurant when the mission is over, eating greasy food, and neither of them bother to say thanks for anything because they know they don’t need to.)

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura and Cooper and Natasha; they sit around the table together and Cooper is fascinated by Natasha’s stories because they’re _so much more interesting_ than what dad tells him, and Clint feigns a little bit of hurt but really, he’s secretly thankful that his kids are taking to Natasha so well.

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura and Natasha except it’s not Thanksgiving, it’s the day after, and it’s just leftovers and wine and beer while Cooper is at a friend’s house, and they take the opportunity to have dinner by themselves, each of them casually talking about everything BUT the fact that they’re thankful to have found each other, and Clint plays with Natasha’s foot under the table and Laura reaches over and squeezes Natasha’s knee and smiles.

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura and Natasha and Cooper and Lila right after Lila is born and there’s a lot of commotion and a lot of screaming but later, when dinner and dessert has been cleaned up, Laura walks out of the kitchen to find the television on and holiday cartoons playing quietly and Clint stretched out on the couch, basically asleep while holding Cooper, who’s curled up next to him under his arm also asleep, and Natasha is sitting in one of the big armchairs holding Lila against her chest and Laura realizes how thankful she is that she somehow managed to find this family for herself.

(Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura and Natasha, the first one after the Battle of New York, and the kids don’t know anything is wrong but there’s a little less craziness than usual and the adults sit around the table more somberly and all think the same thing, that they’re thankful they get to have Clint sitting around the table with them, making dumb turkey jokes, when he almost didn’t come home.)

Thanksgiving with Clint and Laura and Natasha and Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel; and Natasha stays at the farm for the week and helps Laura cook so that she can also take care of Nate, while Clint takes the kids to the park and takes them food shopping, and the Macy’s parade plays in the background in the morning while Laura and Natasha cook, and Clint holds Nate and points out the big floats on television while Cooper reads on the couch and Lila draws pictures for everyone’s place settings, and after dinner, when the kids are asleep, Clint and Natasha and Laura go upstairs and get into bed together, exhausted and thankful and falling into each other’s arms.

 


	49. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Laura/Nat, "it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself."**

For Laura, it’s the perfect moment.

It’s late, but not too late – the kids are asleep before 8, and Clint’s off on another solo mission that he’s sworn will only take 48 hours, at most. She’s alone with Natasha, who has been staying at the house in lieu of wanting to go far while waiting for Clint to return, and over the past 24 hours, they’ve fallen into a comfortable rhythm of co-parenting, which is really Laura doing most of the work while Natasha lends enough of a helping hand so that Laura feels like she’s not drowning.

Natasha, for her part, has retreated upstairs to change, leaving Laura to pick a wine and a movie for the night’s portion of adult relaxation. Laura’s already drank one full glass in preparation for what she’s decided to bring up, and is refilling her glass when Natasha walks back downstairs.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she says as she sits down on the couch. “Every time I step somewhere, I’m convinced one of them is going to wake up screaming.”

Laura laughs. “They do actually sleep, Nat. A lot harder than they probably should.” She brings the two glasses of wine into the living room and Natasha takes her glass.

“Mmm. Good choice,” she decides, running her tongue over her lips, and Laura has to stop herself from staring at how red Natasha’s mouth is. It’s mostly the wine, but it’s also just the way Natasha’s features are – her lips were something Laura spent a lot of time thinking about when her mind wandered.

“Yeah? I wasn’t sure. You _are_ sort of a wine connoisseur.”

Now it’s Natasha’s turn to laugh. “Just because I pretended to be a sommelier for a month undercover does not make me a wine connoisseur,” she replies. “But I’ll happily take credit.” She sits down on the couch, folding her legs underneath her. “So, we’ve got the wine…what’s our movie?”

Laura tries to calm her nerves as she joins Natasha on the couch. “Actually, before we start the movie…I wondered if we could talk. It’s just not often we get time to ourselves.”

“Okay,” Natasha agrees easily. “What’s up?”

Of course she wouldn’t suspect anything different than a normal conversation. And of course Laura shouldn’t expect her to pick up on her feelings, as obvious as they seemed. She wasn’t exactly screaming “I’m attracted to you” at the top of her lungs. Laura takes a deep breath.

“I like having you here. A lot. I feel safer and I feel happier, but it’s not just when Clint’s away…it’s all the time. I know that I’ve got two kids and it’s not that exciting here and I run errands a lot, and I know you have a lot of places to go when you’re on the road and you have your work, but…” _But I really like you and need to know if you feel the same way._ “But I just hope I can convince you to stay and keep getting to know me.” It feels like the lamest cop-out she can come up with, and she hates herself for it, even when Natasha’s lips curve into a sly smile, as if she’s realized what Laura _isn’t_ saying.

“You’re trying to convince me to stay?”

Laura cringes at Natasha’s response, her heart deflating. “Is that what it sounds like?”

Natasha’s grin widens. “No,” she says. “It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

Laura swallows hard and takes a long drink of wine. “Maybe I am,” she admits. “I’ve never had this before. This…feeling. You’re the first.”

“Really?” Natasha raises an eyebrow skeptically. “I find that hard to believe.”

Laura snorts. “Believe it. I don’t exactly have PTA parents breaking down my door, Natasha.”

“Well, that’s a pity,” Natasha answers. “Because they’re the ones missing out.”

She leans over and kisses her, and Laura’s whole world lights up.


	50. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Laura/Natasha, "my nightmares are usually about losing you."**

Natasha won’t admit a lot of things, but she will admit this: Laura is the strongest person she knows.

She wanted to hate her the first time she met her. She wanted to hate this woman who got to Clint first, even though that was an irrational reason to hate Laura. When she realized that, she wanted to hate her for being so smart, and so compassionate, and so understanding. She wanted to hate her for being the perfect balance of “if you do something wrong I’ll kill you” and “it’s okay, we all make mistakes.” She wanted to hate her for being beautiful, even when she wore no make-up and had bags under her eyes and wore frumpy, non-fitting clothes.

But she couldn’t hate her. She couldn’t be angry, hard as she tried, and it was a frustrating thing, especially for someone who had lived most of their life being distrusting of others. 

The first night they spend alone, Natasha tells herself there are no expectations. No expectations for being more than friends – she didn’t know if Laura liked her like that. No expectations for being accepted as more than Clint’s partner – she didn’t expect Laura to be that open. Certainly no expectations for anything more than a simple night in. Which is why she doesn’t think anything of it when Laura puts some leftovers in the microwave and then goes upstairs to take a quick shower, leaving Natasha alone in the kitchen to set the table and pick out a wine.

When Natasha realizes it’s been more than half an hour, and Laura still hasn’t come back downstairs, she starts to get suspicious, if not a little worried. She finishes pouring the bottle of red she’s chosen and takes a long sip from her own glass, before walking upstairs.

“Laura?”

She’s even more concerned when she realizes the bathroom is empty, the light off, steam emitting from the room. She walks slowly towards the master bedroom.

“Laura?”

Pushing open the door when she doesn’t respond, she double-takes at what she sees – Laura sitting on the floor, back against the bed, head bowed forward. Natasha doesn’t hesitate or think before she drops down next to her, putting her hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Laura raises her head slowly, her wet hair dripping water onto her long-sleeved shirt. “I don’t know what happened,” she says quietly. “Sometimes, I just…have these feelings. And I need to be alone.” She wipes her face with her hand. “I’m sorry. That you had to see me like this.”

“Don’t be,” Natasha says, making herself more comfortable as she puts her arm around her. “You know I’ve seen Clint like this before, right?”

Laura shakes her head as a tear slides down her cheek. “That’s different. Your work…you have a reason –”

“And so you do,” Natasha says, putting her hand on Laura’s cheek. “You’re alone more than you should be. You’re in this house by yourself, Clint’s job isn’t exactly safe…I don’t know how you do it.”

Laura swallows hard, leaning more into Natasha, burrowing into her shoulder. “Sometimes I have nightmares. I get so worried that something’s going to happen.”

Natasha strokes her hair gently. “To Clint?”

When Laura speaks, her voice is soft. “To both of you.”

Natasha’s hand stills in Laura’s hair, and she forces herself to remember how to move and breathe as the weight of Laura’s words settles in her mind. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promises, making sure she finds Laura’s eyes, still glassy and wet. “I promise.”

She kisses her without thinking – she doesn’t even know if she’s taking it too far – but when Laura kisses her back strongly, her heart starts beating faster and her lips curve into a smile.

“I’ll take that promise,” Laura says shyly as they break away, and all Natasha can think about as she stares into her eyes, is, _me too_.

 


	51. Chapter 51

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Clint/Natasha/Laura, "I didn’t lose it, I just misplaced it."**

Clint knows the smackdown is coming, so much so that he almost doesn’t want to go home. So for awhile, he doesn’t. He drives around in circles, he goes through an entire Billy Joel album, and he stops for an extended lunch at the market where he usually picks up groceries.

The thing is, it wasn’t his fault. Of course, Laura wasn’t going to believe that. Neither was Natasha. It didn’t matter if it was the truth, it just mattered that this was who Clint was, especially when he was home, and no amount of apology will ever change that. 

Especially when the thing that was his fault was misplacing his wife’s wedding ring, which he was supposed to have taken care of while he got it cleaned.

_It’s not going to be so bad_ , Clint rationalizes as he finally makes his way home for real. Laura could be deadly when she wanted to, but he’s survived worse yelling. And Natasha was a different story altogether – nothing could be as bad as Natasha abusing him, however consensually, when she was angry about something she was totally in her right to hate him for. _It’s not going to be so bad_. He wishes he could at least believe himself.

“Took you long enough,” Natasha says when he walks up the porch steps. “Cooper’s not going to be out forever, you know. I know that you think it takes five seconds to have sex, because all you do is shoot and run, but I actually like the experience.”

“Ha.” Clint makes a face. “I should be more offended you think it only takes me five seconds to orgasm.”

“Doesn’t it?” Natasha smirks, leaning over to kiss him as he bends down. “Laura’s inside.”

He nods, opening the door slowly, immediately meeting the smell of pancakes. 

“Breakfast for dinner?”

Laura peeks her head out from the kitchen, and shrugs loosely. “Cooper requested it and I was too tired to buy more eggs, so I just used what we had. Did you get everything while you were out?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, scuffing his foot against the ground. “Got the car inspected, too. Um.” He eyes her from a distance. “Remember how you asked me to clean your ring?”

“Yes,” Laura says, her voice not betraying any hint of suspicion, which Clint knows that won’t last.

“Um, well.”

“Clint.” Laura turns around, leaving two pancakes cooking on the stove. “Please tell me you didn’t lose my wedding ring.”

“I didn’t lose it!” Clint bursts out. “I just misplaced it.” He pauses. “Well, Cooper misplaced it. “But I know where it is, I swear.”

“You lost Laura’s _ring_?” Natasha asks sharply, and Clint winces as he turns around.

“Not you, too.”

“How the hell did you lose her ring?”

“I didn’t lose it!” Clint repeats in frustration. “Cooper took the bag by accident when he left the car. I already called Aaron’s mom, she’s got it and she’s going to make sure she brings it back before he comes home, even, I made her promise to stop by today.”

Laura stares at Clint and then shakes her head, going back to her pancakes. She switches off the burner and then turns around, glaring.

“I’m going to kill you.”

Clint tries to smile. “After we make a baby, you mean?”

Laura rolls her eyes and Natasha wraps her arms around his waist, kissing the back of his neck. Laura meets them in the middle of the kitchen, sandwiching Clint between them, and suggestively eyeing his pants. 

“Yes. After that.”

 


	52. Chapter 52

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Clint/Natasha/Laura, "things you said with too many miles between us"**

She misses her.

She misses _them_.

It’s silly, when she lets herself think about it – Laura has never been someone who considered herself a clingy person. Aside from her childhood and a few stuffed animals, she considers herself a reasonably independent person. She had gone to college away from home, lived on her own during high school when she attended a learning retreat in California, and craved the moments when she was alone and could drink wine or read a book by herself without being bothered.

Well, that was before two SHIELD agents – assassins, really – had upended her life, though arguably in the best way possible.

Laura places a hand on her stomach, still flat – she’s only a few weeks into her pregnancy but she already feels like she can sense the baby growing inside of her, the phantom kicks that will eventually nudge against her fingers and the tiny hands that will flail around in growth. For the first time in her life, she’s home alone and not exactly thrilled about it. Laura often didn’t care that she wasn’t a part of Clint and Natasha’s avenging lifestyle, or a part of any of their more “exciting” pursuits, except for when the two people she loved went off and left her in this idealistic suburban life – the one they also shared with her, but the one they often returned to bruised, injured, or exhausted.

She picks up the phone, staring at the small numbers. Natasha and Clint had left her with a burner, but she was only supposed to use it in case of an emergency – they would call, they promised, from secure lines when they could. Laura knows it won’t do any good for her to call unnecessarily; they’d most likely get worried and think she was in trouble but even more likely, they wouldn’t be around to pick up at all, and then –

Oh, screw it.

Laura dials before she can stop herself. Just because she hasn’t really _used_ the burner doesn’t mean she hasn’t memorized numbers. She’s surprised when Clint answers almost immediately, on the first ring.

“Laura?”

“I –“ Hearing Clint’s voice, all semblance of words and decorum goes out the window, and her voice becomes soft and meek. “Hi.”

“Why are you calling? Did something happen?“

“No, I – I’m fine, I swear.” She stops to compose herself. “I just, um.” Her hand finds her belly again. “I don’t know if its hormones or this stupid baby or this stupid big house, but I miss you, and…” She suddenly realizes how trivial and dumb she’s being, Clint and Natasha were off doing something that was actually dangerous or life-threatening, they were doing their _job_ , and here she was, calling them like a lovesick teenager because she simply missed having them with her.

“Hey, Laur, it’s okay.” Clint’s voice drops to match her soft tone. “We miss you too.”

She swallows down a lump in her throat. “I’m sorry. I know you’re busy and working.”

“Working?” Clint laughs shortly. “It’s five in the morning and you actually caught us at what’s probably the only good time we’re gonna have on this mission. Hell, I’m not even wearing pants.”

Laura frowns, the lines around her mouth deepening in annoyance. “You’re cuddling? Without me?”

“Well, what were we supposed to do?” Natasha’s voice teases, and Laura realizes Clint must have either passed the phone over or put her on speakerphone. “Not like we could find a Laura Life Model Decoy.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Laura says, feeling a little lighter. Natasha’s voice is sleepy and hazy but warm, like a rasping wind that feels like home.

“Better you don’t know, and let’s hope you never find out,” Natasha replies. “Hey, how’s the little guy?”

Laura smiles, looking down at her stomach. “So you’ve decided he’s a boy, huh?”

“Hey, the word guy can be gender-neutral,” Natasha defends, and then there’s a grunt and Laura suspects she must have punched Clint in an attempt to get him to agree with her. She sighs.

“Ganging up on me _and_ cuddling without me. I feel cheated.”

“File under: things we said to each other when we’re away,” Natasha answers with a yawn. “I miss you.”

“Well then, come home,” Laura says, unable to keep the whine out of her voice. She’s being unfair, she knows, it’s not the first time she’s been left alone since they’d all fallen into this relationship together – since she’d let herself love Clint and Natasha as two people, rather than just one or the other, or neither of them.

“We will,” Clint promises. “You know that. You never have to worry, okay? We’ll always come home.”

She does know that.

She does.

And while she’s still by herself, at least for a few more days, that promise makes feel a little less alone.

 


	53. Chapter 53

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Clint/Natasha/Laura, "things you said at 1am"**

“Shit.”

Natasha whispers the words before she can stop herself, but even still, she knows that hasn’t done any good. Clint was bad enough when it came to sussing out unfamiliar noise, and Laura wasn’t as trained but she had enough experience living in potential danger to know how to pay attention to things that went bump in the night. Put a SHIELD agent and someone who had birthed three kids in a house together, and, well – you might as well give up on ever being sneaky, even if you’re Natasha Romanoff. So she only feels a little bad when the lights turn on in the hallway, illuminating Laura’s sleepy face and the small head of the baby attached to her breast. And really, the only reason Natasha’s guilt level is at 70% instead of 100% is because she can tell by the double bags under Laura’s eyes and the way she’s walking that it wasn’t Natasha who woke her up.

“Please tell me you slept,” Natasha says quietly, apprehension churning in her stomach. It’s funny because Natasha can count on the fingers of one hand the things that terrify her. Mostly, they were emotional things rather than physical things (though she really couldn’t stand cockroaches), but waking up a sleeping baby was a highlighted fear.

Laura laughs hoarsely. “What’s sleep?” she asks tiredly. “I haven’t done that in years.”

“That’s what it feels like,” Natasha offers, and Laura laughs again, sitting down.

“No, I’m pretty sure I haven’t actually slept in years.” Now her voice sounds sad, and Natasha’s gut clenches, because she knows what Laura means. Sleeping babies were one thing – so were children who woke up in the middle of the night, or cried because they wouldn’t wear a certain shade of blue to school. But near-death experiences, disappearances, gunshot wounds, brainwashing, aliens, traitors, and bows and arrows were another.

“You have to stop doing this.”

Laura raises an eyebrow in the dark. “What? Having babies?”

“No,” Natasha says, shaking her head. “Thinking that this…that I’m going to just crawl back into this normal life and expect that everything will go back to the way it was.”

The way it was before she stood in the room that had always been hers and tainted it with her own dumb feelings, the room that was hers before Tony and Steve and Bruce – _Bruce_ – before she fucked up a relationship with two people who would have given – _have_ given – everything to her, love and intimacy and trust and all the things she had been searching for without knowing they were right in front of her.

“You think it’s not?”

Laura’s words are so gentle and her voice is so calm that Natasha wants to cry, because she’s been away for _so long_ , and Clint’s been home, retired and normal, and she’s been fucking around in different states and countries pretending she didn’t miss two people she loved, two people who she once pledged to make a life with, two people who were her family in every single way, from the way they kissed her to the way their children – _her_ children – hugged her and played with her.

“I fucked up.”

Laura sighs sadly. “That’s a hell of a statement to make at 1am.”

“It doesn’t make it any less true,” Natasha insists, moving to sit down on the couch. She immediately jumps when she realizes there’s something underneath her that she hasn’t noticed because she’s been too focused on Laura and her face.

“Jesus!”

“Ugh.” Clint’s voice is muffled and just as tired, and Natasha tries to slow her suddenly rapidly paced heart. “Welcome home.”

“Welcome home, yourself,” Natasha says, leaning over to kiss him as he sits up. There’s dried baby food on his shirt and his hair smells like it hasn’t been washed in at least two days, and it’s entirely endearing, in the way that this Clint – her Clint, domestic, real, home – has always been. “I see you took the easy shift.”

“Well, it’s not like he can suck at my boobs,” Clint grumbles, slouching backwards and rubbing a hand over his face. Laura walks forward with Nathaniel still nursing quietly, and sits down on the other side of her.

“We missed you.”

Natasha’s mouth twitches upwards. “You’re just saying that because you haven’t slept.”

“No,” Laura whispers, shifting as Natasha leans her head on her shoulder. “We really missed you, Nat.”

Natasha’s eyes burn. “So you’re not angry? That I…that I tried…” She can’t get the words out, because somehow, saying them out loud makes it real: the fact she had stupidly attempted to find love in someplace other than the only other place she had ever known it.

“If you didn’t try, then it wouldn’t be love,” Laura reminds her. “But if you want, we can always start over.”

Natasha swallows and lifts her head, kissing Laura on her bare shoulder, right over the peeling skin of a sunburn.

“If we start over, does that mean we can bypass every single one of my dumb injuries?” Clint asks, snuggling into Natasha’s side. Natasha laughs, and leans her head against Laura’s again.

“When do we start?”

 


	54. Chapter 54

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **AIM attacks while Clint is helping Lila's girl scout troop sell cookies! Do the power of THIN MINTS save the day!?**

The house says 596, just like the paper says, and so Lila rings the doorbell with gutso.

“Hello!” She pastes on her best smile, just like her mom taught her. (“Always smile, Lila. It makes people trust you.”) The man looking down at her doesn’t smile, however. Instead, he’s straight-faced.

Well. She would change that.

“My name is Lila, and I’m selling Girl Scout cookies to support Troop 4235,” she begins brightly. “Our money will be able to support the Boys and Girls Club, _and_ Planned Parenthood! Would you be interesting in buying some cookies?”

(“Never give out your last name,” dad had told her once she got older. Lila had been confused.

“Is that because you’re an Avenger-y person?”

Clint had exchanged a glance with Laura, and Lila had tried not to pay attention, because she _knew_ what those gazes meant.

“Yes.”)

“I don’t think so,” says the man cryptically. Lila frowns.

“Oh.” She inclines her head and thinks. “Is there someone home who would like to buy cookies? We have thin mints today!”

The man looks increasingly nervous, and glances at someone Lila can’t see. Something about the way he moves makes her eyes narrow and her skin prickle; she’s seen these types of things when her dad has shown her videos of his work, while her mom looked on with annoyance.

“Well, that’s okay.” Lila starts backing away slowly, lowering her bag of cookies. “I hope you have a good day, Mister.”

The man that comes out of nowhere from behind the door to lunge at her is fast, but Clint – her father, the SHIELD agent, the man who has always raced to be there when she fell out of a tree or fell down the stairs – is faster. He races up from the driveway, where he’s been sitting watchfully in the car, and before Lila can understand exactly what’s happening, she’s pushed to the side as her dad tackles the man who has been reaching for her.

Lila rolls over; one knee is scraped and red and there’s dirt on her hands but her dad is still fighting, and she knows she can’t just sit here. He would tell her to – that this wasn’t her fight, that she was too young to be involved – but Lila knows he’s secretly proud of the fact that she tries to protect her family.

She picks up the the bag of cookies, which is heavier than she’s used to, and comes up behind the man who is trying to wrestle Clint to the ground. She swings blindly, whacking the bag into the man’s back. It doesn’t make much of an impact, but it does its job – it makes him stop and turn – and it gives Clint the leverage he needs.

He tackles the man to the stoop and grabs his arms, twisting them behind his back. While the man struggles, Clint frowns.

“AIM. Really? All this time? And trying to steal my daughter’s _cookies_?”

Afterwards, when the phone calls have been made and they’re driving home, Clint will tell Lila how proud he is. Lila will smile.

“Auntie Nat taught me that move,” she’ll inform him. “I’m calling it Thin Mints save the day.”

 


	55. Chapter 55

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Clint/Natasha/Laura, "they know about us"**

By the time Natasha makes it to the safe house, she’s pretty sure her wound is infected. She’s definitely losing blood faster than she can catalog, and her only consolation as she limps up the long path towards the cabin situated in literally the middle of nowhere is that at least she’s keeping one promise in this goddamn world – that she’d die before she’d let anything happen to Laura and Clint and the kids.

She reaches the door and scrabbles for the handle, sweat and blood making it difficult for her to gain a proper grip. _Fucking HYDRA_ , she thinks to herself as she pushes open the door with the last of her strength, all but collapsing onto the hardwood floor. It was always HYDRA, even when she didn’t expect it. She’d laugh if she wasn’t in so much pain.

The gasp and scream that she hears against closed eyes is low-pitched and solo, and she takes comfort in the fact that she had managed to catch Laura in a situation where none of the kids were around. Granted, that didn’t mean Clint wasn’t somewhere with them and could overhear her pathetic groans, but she’s trusting her gut on that one.

“ _Natasha_.” Laura’s hands are by her head, helping her move and then pressed against her leg. “Natasha, what happened?”

“Assholes,” Natasha mutters, trying to speak through the pain. “Wanna kill ‘em for me?”

Laura thins her lips and gets up, running to the kitchen and returning with a large first aid kit and a bowl of warm water. “I got you,” she says softly, her hands deftly wrapping the wound and squeezing blood from the gash on her skin. “She kisses one of her fingers and presses it to Natasha’s stomach, where her shirt has ridden up her middle. “I’ve always got you.”

Natasha struggles to keep her composure, now that she’s here and being taken care of and no longer in immediate danger of getting killed or shot. “They know about us.”

“So?” Laura asks, continuing to dress Natasha’s wound. Her hands are soft on her skin, and if Natasha thinks if she wishes hard enough, she can imagine that it’s Laura after sex, Laura after a shower, Laura after pushing a baby out of her body and cuddling with Natasha and Clint in bed, whispering how much she loves them.

“Laura.” Natasha shoves her hands away and manages to make eye contact, despite her weariness. “They _know_ about us.”

Not just Clint’s family – not just Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel. Not just the farm, the house that doubles as her own, the place where they’ve laughed and cried and kissed and made love and given vows and fallen for each other, away from the troubles of the world, like a secret bubble. All of that, and the fact that Natasha had more to lose than just the partner who rescued her so many years ago, in so many ways.

There’s a beat, longer than necessary, just enough for Natasha to feel the strained worry that settles over the small cabin. Then Laura leans forward and kisses Natasha full on the lips.

“Let them come.”

When Natasha pulls away, she sees Clint standing at the doorway, holding Cooper and Lila’s hands. His face is set in anger, but when he speaks, Natasha can hear it in his voice: _no one is going to hurt the people I love._

Natasha’s heart swells and she nods, looking at Laura, who squeezes her hand – their own version of _I love you_.

“Let them come.”

 


	56. Chapter 56

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **Clint/Natasha/Laura, "please forgive me"**

It’s not the way she wants this. Not like this.

Not without her.

Laura pulls the straps of her backpack tighter over her shoulder and continues to move forward, despite the sweat that drips down her neck and plasters her hair to her skin. Her phone buzzes just as she reaches another intersection, and she stops to give herself a break, pulling it out and staring at the screen with a frown.

 

_You shouldn’t have said anything._

_How was I supposed to know?_

_I could’ve told you._

_I don’t regret it, Clint._

She’s alone. He’s at home with Cooper, one year old and crying at the drop of a hat. Natasha had bolted, left her gun and a note, and Laura had made the trek to New York by herself.

_“I’ll fix this,”_ she had told him before she kissed him goodbye, cheeks wet with tears and baby spit. The calendar had read July 23 – one year since they had all moved in together and made it official, or at least, more official than staying at each other’s apartments and in each other’s beds.

One year since they all said “I love you” for the first time and meant it.

_“I’m not sure if you can,”_ he had responded sadly, and she had refused to let herself accept that her husband – for all he knew and loved his partner – could be right.

 

_You don’t regret telling her about her own pregnancy?_

_She deserved to know. I couldn’t let her find out on her own._

_You don’t know what she’s been through, Laur._

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t know Natasha Romanoff, Red Room spy and assassin who killed children. But she knew Natasha Romanoff, world-class baker (even though she’d never admit it), husky-voiced after sex, all soft hands and sweet smiles, the girl that would take a bullet if it meant she could keep Laura from harm.

It worked both ways, and Laura was willing to take that bullet for her. Even if it meant having to break her trust.

She adjusts her backpack. The positive pregnancy test Natasha had left is still in her pocket, and it feels like she’s carrying around the most precious thing in the world. She’ll find her, and she’ll show her what she had told her before she had left, that this child was hers – theirs – Cooper’s sister and Natasha’s daughter.

(“I want to have a baby with you,” Laura had said one night while they were cooking dinner, Cooper fast asleep in Clint’s arm. Natasha had almost spilled her coffee down the front of her shirt.

“You wouldn’t want to have a baby with me.”

“Yes,” Laura had decided. “I would. And I do.”)

 

Laura puts the phone back in her pocket and continues walking. She’s about halfway down another crowded street when her eyes catch a flash of red streaking across her vision. It happens so quickly that she’s sure she’s missed it, but something in her gut propels her to pick up speed and follow. Impulsively, she grabs for her phone.

 

_I found her._

_Laura, whatever you do –_

_I know, Clint._

_I love her too, Laura._

Laura’s throat burns and she shoves the phone into her pocket as she turns a corner. Natasha is standing at the end of an alleyway, but she’s not running. She’s simply waiting with an impassive stare.

Laura swallows hard, and holds out her hand, holding the pregnancy test. “Please forgive me.”

Natasha doesn’t speak, but starts to smile.

 


End file.
